Over The Moon

For someone who is always "obstinately, perfectly herself."

Be careful on the trail, sweetie.

Chapter One

Her parents were right.

Cait MacLean adjusted the cinch on her backpack, hoping to distribute more of its weight to her hips. A couple of weekend camping trips were no preparation for the Appalachian Trail. Ten days out of Springer Mountain, Georgia, her bones ached, she had blisters on both heels, and the moleskin bandages she'd applied to protect her feet had balled at the bottom of her socks.

The slanting afternoon light fired a stand of purple rhododendron, their pink blossoms vivid against a background of somber fir trees. Cait glanced back at Josh, trudging silently behind her across the rough flank of the mountain, and pointed.

But Josh didn't look. He wouldn't even meet her eyes. Maybe he was cold. Or concentrating on his footing.

Or maybe he was still sulking because she wouldn't have sex with him last night.

Cait sighed. Four of them had started the trek: Cait and her roommate Jill, and Jill's boyfriend, Tyler, and Tyler's buddy Josh. But just south of Bly Gap, Tyler twisted his ankle, and Jill went off trail to take him home, promising to meet up with them in Hot Springs. Which meant for at least the next two weeks, Cait was stuck with Josh and his conviction that now they were alone, they should be sharing a lot more than the cookstove and the two-man tent.

Cait resumed her dogged progress up the slope.

She had considered dropping off the trail. But Jill claimed she would feel terrible if Cait changed her postgraduation plans because of Tyler's accident. More than a hike, this trip was Cait's chance to prove to her parents—and herself—she was an adult now, capable of tackling life on her own.

She straightened her shoulders against the weight of the pack. So, okay, her plan sounded pretty dumb now that she was actually putting one foot in front of the other, like something she would have dreamed up in middle school, like a mistake. A six-month mistake. But it was her mistake, and she was committed to it. Her family took commitments seriously, which probably explained Josh and sex.

Cait smiled wryly. Or rather, Josh and no sex.

The last rays of afternoon touched the ridgeline, and a shelter humped into view. Cait drew a relieved breath. At least he wouldn't pressure her tonight.

She lengthened her stride, eager to shed her pack and her own thoughts for a while in the company of other hikers.

But as she approached the three-sided shelter, her steps slowed. Instead of the dozen or more bodies she expected, there were only three sprawled on the wooden platform: a really big guy, a really small guy, and a tall, seated figure in the shadows.

"What are you waiting for?" Josh asked behind her. "An invitation?"

Cait hesitated. Violent crime was rare along the trail. But something held her back, like her father's hand or her mother's voice. She'd read stories…

Josh bumped past her. "Come on. It's getting dark."

Dark and cold.

At least this shelter boasted a fire pit. You couldn't build a fire just anywhere along the trail. If she wanted to get truly warm tonight… Anyway, Josh was with her. His determination to couple up annoyed her, but it would also protect her.

Reluctantly, she followed him under the metal roof. A circle of lamplight pooled on the rough timbers.

The little man looked up from his… whittling? Pale curls of wood decorated the floor by his boots. A knife flashed in his hand. "Welcome. I'm Goodfellow."

The big guy, with a head like a bullet and a build like a bear, grunted. "Ursus."

Josh let his pack thump to the floor. "Diogenes," he introduced himself. He jerked his thumb toward Cait. "Wildcat."

Cait flushed. She understood the tradition of trail names, the impulse that drove the pilgrims and dropouts to shake off their old identities and choose new ones. But she thought Josh's chosen name—Diogenes, the philosopher, the cynic—was pretentious, and she hated the name he had bestowed on her. She was five-seven, for God's sake, with her father's lanky build and her mother's brown eyes. Hardly a wildcat. Every time Josh used the name, she felt less like some sleek native of these mountains and more like his sex kitten. Maybe that's what he had in mind.

"Just Cait," she corrected hastily. "Caitlin."

Josh glowered.

The little man grinned, revealing small, pointed teeth.

Cait blinked. "Diogenes, eh? And is it one honest man you're seeking by lantern light?"

Josh puffed his chest, pleased by the recognition. Cait kneeled to unstrap the cookstove from her pack.

"Aren't all travelers on the trail seeking something?" Josh asked grandly.

"Or running away," the third man put in quietly from his corner.

His voice, deep and unaccented, flowed over Cait like warm water. Flustered by her reaction, she yanked harder at the strap.

Josh frowned. "Who are you?"

"Rhys."

Not a trail name, she thought, tugging. The strap yielded as the third man, this Rhys guy, unfolded from his corner and strolled forward into the light so that she saw him, really saw him, for the first time.

Her jaw dropped. Well. Wow. He was… handsome was too weak a word, and beautiful sounded too pretty. But he was beautiful, with a face that could have been painted by Da Vinci, all bold lines and secrets, and a body like a Greek statue. His eyes were the color of old gold coins, his hair was long, dark, and shiny, and his clothes—black jeans, black jacket—were fitted and clean.

Cait was suddenly conscious of her straggling blond braid, her clunky boots, her sweat-drenched layers of clothing.

"You're not a thru-hiker, are you?" Josh asked.

In the closed society of the trail, thru-hikers, hikers attempting to complete the two-thousand-mile trek from Georgia to Maine between spring and first snowfall, were its scruffy aristocracy.

But Tall, Dark, and Clean-Shaven didn't seem abashed by Josh's attempt to put him in his place. If anything, he looked amused. "No."

"Where are you from?"

Like freshmen during new student week or strangers in a bar, hikers followed predictable conversational patterns: What's your major? What's your sign? Come here often? But under Josh's question, Cait heard an unfamiliar note of challenge.

Rhys smiled faintly. "Around."

Josh scowled.

Cait straightened. No way was she standing here while they pissed on trees or pawed the ground or did whatever men did to mark their territory. "I'm getting water."

Rhys turned his beautiful, golden eyes on her, and her insides contracted. She opened her mouth to breathe. "There's a stream," he said. "I'll show you."

Cait felt an instant's qualm. Forget beautiful. She didn't go off into the woods with strangers. She looked at Josh, expecting him to say something like, Let me get it or I'll come, too. But all he said was, "Good. I want some tea."

Well, at least he'd be within shouting range.

She grabbed the canteens and marched—stomped, really, her mother always told her to watch her temper—into the woods. Rhys didn't stomp. He glided through the trees like Uncas in The Last of the Mohicans. Cait slowed, setting her feet with care among the rocks and leaves.

She heard water before she saw it, like the gurgle in the pipes when somebody showered upstairs, muffled but close.

Rhys eased through a break in the bushes, still doing the Native American guide thing, and squatted beside a fallen log. Between slick rocks, a narrow stream pushed its way through tree roots and over stones rippling with moss.

He extended his hand. "Give me your canteen."

Cait tugged the strap over her head. "I've got it. Thanks."

He drew back so she could squeeze in beside him. Wedged above the rushing water, she barely had space to kneel, and precious little room to maneuver. Her hip pressed his thigh. Her shoulder brushed his arm. The scents of earth and water, green and growing, sharp and secret, rose and enveloped her.

Her head swam.

She looked up, struggling for breath. Rhys watched her, his pupils large and dark in his odd gold eyes.

Tearing her gaze away, Cait plunged the canteen into the stream. The cold shock cleared her head. She filled both canteens before adding purification tablets to the water.

"You don't need to do that here," Rhys said.

She screwed the caps back on. "Better safe than sorry, my parents always say."

"Do you always do what your parents tell you?"

She winced, his words chafing like the boots against her blisters. Not his fault he'd touched a sensitive spot, she told herself. Or theirs. Her parents loved her. And she loved them. It was only recently she'd found that love a little… restricting.

"Pretty much," she admitted. "Until now."

He raised his eyebrows. With his dark hair falling into his face, he looked like every mistake her mother had ever warned her about, every bad boy her father had ever chased away from their door. "Until… now?"

"This trip," she explained. "They didn't want me to come. They thought it was dangerous."

"They were right," he said.

Cait's throat constricted. But she wasn't letting herself get played by some stranger on the trail, even if he did look like a Greek god.

She stood, slinging the water bottles across her body. "I can handle myself."

His eyes gleamed. "Lucky for you."

She searched for a snappy comeback and found her mind blank. She had to fall back on dignified silence, which wasn't nearly as satisfying.

Rhys smiled a cool, exasperating smile and practically sauntered back to the shelter.

Well, damn.

Cait followed.

While Josh scanned the news and notes scribbled in the shelter's log book, she coaxed water to a boil and prepared their nightly meal of ramen noodles. Nobody else cooked anything—maybe they had eaten already?—but the bearlike guy scrounged branches from the surrounding woods, and Rhys kindled the fire.

The little man stood, shaking his wood shavings into the flames.

"Oh," Cait exclaimed, delighted. "You carved a flute."

He made a queer half-bow and offered it to her. She ran her fingers in disbelief over the smooth, delicate instrument. She had watched him ply his knife for the past half hour, but the piece he held appeared as fine and finished as wood turned on a lathe.

"Can you actually play that thing?" Josh demanded.

Goodfellow regarded Josh with beady black eyes like a bird's. "Maybe. And will you be paying the piper, then?"

"The price isn't his to pay," Rhys said from his corner.

Goodfellow cocked his head. "More's the pity."

Cait refused to be sucked in by the undercurrents swirling through the shelter. "It's lovely," she said, handing the pipe back to Goodfellow.

He tucked it away in his jacket—a shaggy leather jacket, with the fur turned to the inside. She stared. And was that a feather in his hair?

"Are you… Is it Cherokee?" she asked.

He chuckled. "Could be, could be. The old ways are still alive in these hills. The Cherokee knew that."

"But can you play it?" Josh repeated.

Goodfellow's eyes brightened with firelight or malice. "I can play, boy-o. But you might not like my tune."

"I'd love to hear you play," Cait said.

Honestly, what was the matter with Josh? They had to spend the night with these people. Couldn't he at least try to get along?

Josh shrugged. "Suit yourself. I'm turning in."

He retreated to his sleeping bag to unlace his boots, leaving her alone with the other three men in the circle by the fire.

Two weeks until Hot Springs, Cait reminded herself. She could put up with anything for two weeks.

"Goodnight," she called.

Let him cool off. She intended to warm up by the fire. Dragging her own sleeping bag over to protect her butt from the cold ground, she sat and hugged her knees.

Goodfellow blew on his fingers and then, softly, on his pipe. The flute made a sleepy, contented sound, like bird-song at twilight. He grinned at her, his eyes alight and wicked. Cait smiled back, charmed. Uneasy.

He played, a breathy, droning, soothing song, never wavering more than six notes up or down the scale, the tune rising and falling as naturally as the wind or the flames of the fire.

Cait blinked. Smoke wreathed Goodfellow's head and twined around the flute. On the other side of the stone circle, red light slid greedily over Rhys's long body. The fire danced in his eyes. The music swirled, lulling, drugging. It filled her lungs. It caught her thoughts and spun them up and out like sparks against the night sky.

Her breathing slowed. She was warm. Very warm. She should take off her jacket.

The flute's tempo quickened with a throb like a drumbeat that gradually took over the rhythm of her heart. In the fire, images flickered, joined, and combined. Her limbs felt heavy. Her feet were restless. Her blood ran hot.

She wanted to leap and sway like the dancing flames, like the lovely, naked figures in the fire. She stood, combing her curly hair loose from its braid with her fingers. Out of the blaze a dancer rose to partner her, tall, long-legged, lean-hipped, moving with the heat and energy of the fire. Dazzled, she could not see his face. She could not stop her feet or resist the rhythm that crackled and flowed around. him. It trapped her, twirled her as the pipe called, faster, wilder.

Caught in the music, lost in sensation, they twined and writhed together. He was so warm, his dancer's body hard and fluid. Heat radiated from him, from his skin and his golden eyes. Familiar eyes, she thought. Rhys.

She glowed. She burned. Shaking back her hair, she swayed around him, rubbed against him. Warmth infused her cheeks and flooded her veins. She was melting inside, trembling and molten, quivering on the brink of…

Her thoughts stumbled.

Trembling on the point of…

What the hell was she doing?

Cait opened her eyes. She stood alone in front of the fire wearing jeans and a T-shirt. The shifting flames mocked the sudden, shocked stillness inside her. Her arms were bare and cold, her feet leaden in her hiking boots.

All three strangers stared at her: Rhys with dark intensity, Goodfellow almost with pity, and the man called Ursus with a look that made her shudder.

Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. What was she doing? What had she done?

Mortified, shaken, she stooped and groped blindly for her jacket. Her face burned. Her body throbbed.

Rhys swept up her jacket and offered it to her.

"Thank you." She thrust her arms into the sleeves. She couldn't look at him, at any of them. Her breasts still felt heavy. Sensitized. Her knees trembled.

"Are you all right?" His voice was politely impersonal.

She shivered. Was she? What had just happened? Her mother's cautions about date rape crowded the back of her mind. She wondered, with a flash of horror, if she'd been drugged. But all she had eaten was the food she had prepared and some dried fruit from her backpack.

Cait straightened her shoulders. Maybe the wooziness she felt was only an effect of the fire, the result of smoke inhalation and fatigue.

"Fine," she said. But as she turned from the fire, she stumbled as if she'd been drinking.

"Let me help you."

"No!" she said sharply. Too sharply. Her reaction wasn't his fault. But she was still aroused and unbelievably uncomfortable. If he touched her now…

She couldn't think of that. She didn't want to think about it.

"I'm good, thanks," she said.

Goodfellow chuckled. "Good won't always protect you."

"Protection enough," Rhys said. "This time."

Cait ignored them. She wobbled toward the shelter, dragging her sleeping bag with her. Keeping her back to the group by the fire, she struggled with the zipper before crawling inside. Josh never stirred, the rat bastard.

What had happened? She had never been much of a party girl. Her parents' love and watchfulness had seen to that, although Cait considered their worries mostly misplaced. But she'd been spectacularly drunk once or twice in college and had put her roommates to bed more times than she could remember.

This was worse.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she pretended to sleep. Her mind still burned with the after-images of the fire, and her body was restless. Her thoughts raced and scrabbled like the mice foraging for food in the corners of the shelter. Her dreams, when they came, were suffused with tongues of flame and twists of smoke and lots of red, glowing, naked skin. Despite her fatigue, Cait slept fitfully and woke sweating.

The ground was cold and hard and the sky the color of iron when she peeled her eyelids open. Josh snored beside her. She held very still, as if she could somehow hold the day at bay. She didn't want to see the amusement in Goodfellow's eyes or the menace in Ursus's. She didn't want to face Rhys—who had featured in her seething, fevered dreamsat all.

But when she finally, reluctantly, turned her head, the other travelers were gone.

Chapter Two

The tatters of Cait's dream clung like cobwebs through the morning, leaving her uneasy and out of sorts. Tea hadn't helped. Hiking didn't help. The sky pressed down, heavy and cold. The rocks rose up, hard and inhospitable. And Josh was in a mood again.

"Josh." Cait raised her voice. "Hey, Josh."

Since breaking camp, they had tramped four hours without once stopping or seeing another soul. She was glad they hadn't caught up with the others, with Goodfellow and Ursus and Rhys. But…

"I need a break," she said.

Josh didn't turn around. "We can't stop. I want to reach the next shelter before it snows."

Cait squinted through the bare trees at the gray sky. Had the weather discouraged all traffic on the trail? "Snow? In May?"

"May first. We're in the mountains, Wildcat. Elevation four thousand feet. It could definitely snow."

She ignored his patronizing attitude. "I still need a break. A potty break," she added before he could argue.

"Well, hurry up," Josh said.

Like she wanted to hang bare-assed over a six-inch hole in the ground one second longer than she had to.

She eased her pack from her shoulders, setting the frame on the ground, and grabbed her roll of toilet paper and the shovel.

The tall pines close to the trail offered little privacy. Cait walked farther than she wanted to before she found a sheltered spot behind a big boulder.

She was zipping her jeans when she heard an approaching rustle like a large animal or another hiker. Hastily, she buckled her belt and reached for the shovel.

"Josh?"

Silence.

She peered through the screening bushes at the bare, brown slope. Nothing. A crow cawed and launched noisily from a tree.

"Is anyone there?" she called, feeling foolish.

No answer.

Which was a good thing, she told herself staunchly. Picking her way through the coarse, matted undergrowth, she rounded the rock, and came face to face with a bear.

Cait shrieked.

Not a bear. A man with a bear's bulk and menace, a bear's shaggy coat and heavy jaw. Her heart pounded as she recognized the dark beard and gleaming eyes of the big hiker, Ursus.

"Sorry. You startled me," Cait said.

Ursus's little eyes fastened on her face. He didn't say anything at all.

An hour ago she had hoped she would never see Rhys again. Now she wished he would show up. "Are your, um, friends with you?"

Ursus shifted from side to side without speaking. She was now officially, totally, creeped out.

"Well." She edged to her right, but she didn't quite have room to pass between the rock and the tree. "Josh is waiting for me. I'll see you on the trail."

The big man didn't budge.

"Josh?" She raised her voice. "Josh!"

Ursus lunged like a charging bear. Cait screamed and swung the shovel. It connected with a force that jarred her shoulders, and Ursus bellowed and grabbed the handle and wrenched it from her grasp. Her arms stung. Her hands burned. She screamed again and spun around to run.

He clawed at her arm, jerked her jacket. His breath scorched her cheek. Fear rose, blinding, bright. She couldn't see. She couldn't think. She had to get away.

Tearing free, she flung herself forward and ran, her pulse pounding like a rabbit's. She blundered through bushes and around trees, her heavy boots striking and sliding on rocks and leaves.

Ursus roared and lumbered after her.

The trail. She needed to find her way back to the trail, to Josh and safety.

But every time she turned, her pursuer veered to catch her, to cut her off. Roots tripped her ankles. Branches whipped her face. Her legs were tired. Her lungs labored, the cold air scraping her throat and stabbing her chest like knives. She had no breath to scream. She barely had breath to run. But she floundered on and on, driven by will and panic and the sound of crashing behind her.

The ground reared up, and she fell, hard, knocking the air from her lungs. Cait sprawled, clutching twigs and leaves between her fingers, her heart buzzing in her ears and black spots dancing before her eyes. The wood tilted and spun crazily as she gasped and prayed. Oh, God, oh God, oh God…

Gradually, the silence seeped into her senses.

No crashing. No grabbing. No roaring. Only the occasional rustle of a squirrel and the smell of leaf mold tickling her nostrils.

Cait breathed in and out as her heart drummed and the forest floor settled and was still around her. In. And out. Where was he?

Where was she?

Cautiously, she levered herself on her elbows and raised her head.

Nothing.

She crawled to a sitting position, taking careful inventory of her scratched hands and bruised knees. No broken bones, no twisted ankles. She was only breathless and shaken and scared. She scanned the silent, empty woods.

Scared and lost.

The first flakes fell as the shadows deepened under the trees. Cait felt the snow's kiss on her cheek, cold and soft as dread, and shuddered.

She needed to keep moving to stay warm. But the longer she walked, the more difficult it would be for her rescuers to find her. Where the hell was Josh? Why hadn't he heard her shouting? Why didn't someone—anyone—come?

She had been hiking for what felt like hours, terrified she was wandering in circles. Hadn't she passed those standing rocks before? And that stump looked awfully familiar.

Tears pricked her eyes. She willed them away, straining for a glimpse of the white and blue blazes that marked the trail and its connecting paths. Still nothing. She raised her pocketknife and dug her initials into a tree to guide whoever might come after her.

Too bad she didn't have any bread crumbs to drop. She was starving.

Her hands shook as she returned the knife to her pocket.

Her maps and compass were in her pack, back on the trail. She climbed uphill toward the ridge line, trying to orient herself by the uncertain gray light. But every time she congratulated herself on her progress, the landscape shifted like a giant carpet shaken out and laid down in a new direction.

The trees crowded around her, dark and unfriendly. Their branches whispered and snickered together, and the shadows played tricks on her eyes. She kept turning her head to stare. A white blob of a face under a pointed red cap was only an odd fungus growing on a tree. Two menacing eyes resolved themselves into knot holes on a gnarled trunk. Cait couldn't resist the feeling that the trees were moving just beyond the corners of her vision, herding her downhill.

Which was ridiculous. Maybe she was losing her mind. Not that going crazy would make dying of exposure any easier.

"Help!" She had yelled herself hoarse. Her throat ached with tears. "Hello?"

The forest swallowed her voice. Snow fell, big, wet, white flakes that clung to her hair and melted on her face like tears. Cait closed her eyes in despair.

She wanted her mother.

She wanted to open her eyes and find that this hike through hell was all some horrible dream. Her parents had been right. She only hoped she lived long enough to tell them so.

Straightening her shoulders, Cait opened her eyes and saw, flickering between the dark tree trunks, the red glow of a… fire?

Her heart pushed into her poor, abused throat. She blinked. The glow was still there.

Hardly daring to hope, she forced her heavy legs onward, slipping on wet leaves, grabbing at branches for balance. A path opened before her, as if the wood itself yielded her passage. Rocks and roots smoothed out of her way. Or maybe it was only her eagerness that made the going seem easier.

The smell of wood smoke curled through the trees. Cait sniffed. Somebody was cooking something over that fire. Her stomach rumbled. The last thing she'd eaten was a bowl of gluey oatmeal nine hours ago. Maybe whoever built the fire would be willing to share their dinner?

A rock face loomed out of the twilight, lighter than the bare, black trees, darker than the sky. The fire crackled at its base, protected by an overhang. Maybe she wouldn't die of exposure tonight after all. Cait approached, feeling positively… Okay, cheerful was too strong a word. But she was definitely upbeat.

Until she recognized the tall, broad-shouldered figure feeding a stick to the dancing flames.

Rhys.

The air whooshed from her lungs. It was like falling all over again, first the blow to her chest and then the forest whirling around her while she fought for breath.

She must have made a sound, a gasp, a whimper, because he looked up and frowned. "Caitlin?"

She wanted to run. She didn't think she could move. The energy drained through the soles of her boots, leaving her lightheaded and swaying on her feet.

Rhys straightened and took a step toward her. "Are you all right?"

She tightened her hand on the little knife in her pocket. Like that would protect her. "Where are your friends?" she croaked.

He stopped, still frowning. "Friends?"

"Those… the people you were with. Goodfellow andand Ursus."

Rhys paused before he answered. Taken aback? Or thinking up a lie? "They are not friends," he said at last, carefully. "I travel alone. As you do."

Relief made her wobbly. She wanted to believe him. Could she afford to trust him? Could she afford not to?

"Where is your companion?" he asked.

Cait opened her mouth and shut it again, because admitting she was lost and alone seemed like a really bad idea. But what could she say?

His mouth tightened. "Never mind. You look frozen. Come, sit down. Eat."

Cait bit back a hysterical giggle. Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly…

She always figured the stupid fly got what it deserved. But what if the choice was between the tangled, sticky web and freezing to death in the wilderness? Could you really blame the fly for taking its chances with the spider?

"Okay," she said. "Thanks."

He had stacked wood under the overhang, out of the snow. He steered her to a log by the fire without actually touching her and seated himself at an angle, so she could keep an eye on him without having to stare directly into his face all the time. Sensitive of him. Or else really, really smooth. The fire beating at her exposed face and frozen toes made it hard to care. She hugged her arms, soaking in warmth, trying not to think about how she got here or what she was going to do next.

Rhys leaned forward, and she flinched. He gave her a long, measuring look before removing a heavy aluminum pot from the fire. Okay, so she was a little jumpy. She'd had a bad day, damn it.

She watched him ladle the whatever-it-was from the pot into two bowls. Why two, if he was traveling alone? Unless they'd been sold as a set. All his gear had that shiny, fresh-from-the-showroom look, as if he had more money than experience. He knew his way around a campfire, though. The stuff in the bowls smelled delicious. After almost two weeks on the trail, Cait was sick of noodles and granola.

"Thank you," she said again and dug in.

She identified onions and potatoes, carrots and barley. She poked cautiously at a mushroom cap, remembering the red-and-white fungus on the tree. But it tasted good. She noticed Rhys didn't eat much. He didn't talk much either, but that was okay. She was too hungry to make conversation.

The stew warmed her from the inside out. She nodded, lapped by the heat and lulled by the hiss and pop of the fire. Perhaps she even dozed, because the next thing she knew Rhys was taking the bowl from her hand, saying in his smooth, deep baritone, "You must sleep now."

Uh oh. She struggled back to consciousness. "I, um, don't have my sleeping bag."

He studied her with his beautiful, golden eyes. "You are lost."

Lost and alone in the woods with Tall, Dark, and Mysterious. She didn't need her parents to warn her that was a dangerous combination.

She stuck out her chin. "I ran into a little trouble on the trail. I'm meeting up with my friends at the next shelter."

"At the next shelter," Rhys said, not quite making it a question.

She resisted the urge to squirm. "That's the plan. Is it far?"

"Not far, but difficult to find. I could take you there tomorrow."

If he were planning to rape her, murder her, and dispose of her body tonight, he wouldn't talk about tomorrow, would he?

"That would be great," Cait said. "So I guess we should, um…"

"Sleep," he suggested, a gleam in his eyes that could have been amusement. She hoped it was amusement. "We will be cramped in one sleeping bag, but you will be warm."

Cait ignored the flutter under her breastbone. "Or we could stay up and talk a while."

"Talk."

She wished he wouldn't repeat everything she said. It sounded even more inane the second time around.

"Yeah. Generally I like to know somebody before I crawl into bed with him… That was a joke," she explained, in case he didn't get it. In case he got the wrong idea. "Tell me about your family."

"I have no family," he said in this very flat voice.

Okay. Good to know he didn't have a wife and kiddies tucked away somewhere (and never mind why), but what about parents? Brothers and sisters?

"Then we can sit around the campfire and tell ghost stories," she said.

"Do you know any ghost stories?" Maybe she'd imagined that end-of-subject tone, because he definitely sounded amused now. A current of laughter ran under his dark voice like a stream in the earth.

"Actually, no. My mom didn't like me reading anything supernatural. Which is funny, because she's a librarian and totally against censorship, you know?" Cait shifted on her log. It steadied her to think about her parents: her cheerful, practical mother; her calm, strong father. "She read to me, though. Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables. But no woo woo stuff, no ghost stories or even fairy tales."

"She is unimaginative," Rhys said.

Cait found herself jumping to her mother's defense. "Not unimaginative. Just…"

Scared.

It was a disconcerting thought. An old memory surfaced of the day her mother discovered The Faerie Queene was required reading in Cait's sophomore English class. Cait didn't recall the story itself that well—something about a knight and a lady and lots of enchantment and honor and violence—but she remembered her mother's reaction.

"She's just protective, I guess. Maybe she was afraid they'd give me unrealistic expectations." Cait shrugged. "Or nightmares."

"She may be wise. Dreams have power," Rhys said.

He really talked like that, as though he wasn't used to expressing himself or English was his second language or something. It should have sounded hokey. But remembering her erotic dreams of the night before, dreams in which he had played a starring role, Cait blushed. "Yeah."

"Would you like me to tell you a story?" he offered unexpectedly.

Cait was grateful to be rescued from her embarrassment. "A ghost story?"

"A folk story. Although I think it has sufficient—what did you call it?—'woo woo.'"

She laughed. "Bring it on."

Rhys stared into the heart of the fire and then took a deep breath. "There was ere now a Pooka—"

"What's a Pooka?"

"I'm telling you. It's… Well, it looks like a wild black horse. A pony."

"Why don't you say pony, then?"

"Because it's not a pony. It's a… it's something else. Do you want a story or not?" Frustration edged his tone.

Cait grinned, unrepentant. "Yes, please. Sorry."

So he told her the tale of the Pooka, who would invite you to mount for a ride and then throw you into a ditch or off a cliff. She listened, enthralled, to his dark, liquid voice. His stilted, slightly formal speech only added to the magic of his tale.

He would have been a big hit at the preschool story hour at her mother's library.

"Do you know any more?" Cait asked when he was done.

He nodded and launched into another story, about the small brown Oakmen in red, pointy caps who turned the axes of careless woodsmen to chop off their own legs, and of the will-o'-the-wisp who led travelers astray to drown, and of the Wild Hunt that harried the damned across the sky.

Cait was whirled up in the world he described. Carried away by his voice, she heard the nasty snickers behind the trees, smelled the despair of the decaying bog, cowered at the clamor of the Hunt. His world was magical. Vivid. Evocative. And all his stories ended in death or disaster, at least for the people involved.

No wonder her mother hadn't liked them.

"Don't you know any nice stories?" Cait asked at last, torn between amusement and dismay.

Rhys gave her a sidelong look. "The sidhe are not nice. They just…" For the first time since he started his tale, she saw him struggle for words. "… are," he finished finally.

Are what? Cait wondered.

"Who are the shee?" she asked.

"The people of these hills."

"That makes sense. It sounded Scottish."

His eyebrows lifted. He did it beautifully. He must practice in a mirror.

"The word," Cait explained. "Isn't it Scottish? This area was settled by the Scots, a long time ago."

Rhys shrugged. "Whoever crawls on the surface, they are the same mountains."

"What do you mean, the same?"

He leaned forward to add a log to the fire. Sparks flew into the night. Beyond the overhang, snow drifted down, heavy white flakes that clung to the trees and melted in the draft of the fire. "Longer than your long ago, these hills were a single mountain range that stretched over half of the earth. In time, the lands drifted apart and an ocean came between. But the mountains remember. In their bones and in their heart, they are still the same."

"What are you, a geologist?"

He shook his head. "No. But I have studied… certain things."

"So you're a student."

He smiled faintly, with a gleam like moonlight on the snow. "Sometimes."

Cait exhaled in frustration. Talking to him was like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands. "I just graduated," she said. "This trip is my present."

Some present. Although now that she was safe and fed and sitting by a warm fire with a hot guy, it almost matched her mountain fantasy.

"You said your parents didn't want you to come."

A hot guy who listened. Cait was impressed.

"They didn't." She grinned. "It's more like my present to myself. I'm supposed to start graduate school in the fall. I just wanted some time to clear my head and figure out what I want to be when I grow up without all the parental pressure, you know?"

Rhys was silent so long she was afraid she had offended him.

Cait bit her lip as realization struck. "Oh, God, I'm sorry. I forgot you don't have any family."

His mouth twitched. Was he annoyed or amused? "Not like your family. But I understand perhaps better than you think."

"I doubt it," she said gloomily. "Not unless your father changes the oil in your car every three months and your mother ends every phone call by reminding you to take your vitamins."

"I haven't seen my father since I was eight years old."

Sympathy wrenched her. Eight? Poor kid. Poor baby. She wondered how old he was now. He had the grace and arrogance of a young man, the smooth complexion and shining hair of a child.

Rhys met her gaze, and the glitter in his eyes stopped her breath in her throat.

Not a child, she acknowledged.

"Sorry," she repeated.

"Don't be," he drawled. "It was a long time ago."

Cait couldn't imagine her own childhood without her father's steady, loving presence. "So you're just… over it?"

Rhys's face was cool and smooth as marble. "Yes."

Right. Maybe he believed what he was saying. She did not.

She tried again. "You know, it's only human to miss him. To care."

He gave her another of those dark, unfathomable looks. She didn't want to be attracted to him, damn it. It made an already awkward situation unbelievably uncomfortable.

"What?" she demanded.

He shook his head. "It's not important. We can talk again later. You must be tired after all you've been through."

And how did he know that? she wondered. Sure, she'd admitted running into trouble, but she hadn't breathed a word about Ursus.

On the other hand, Rhys wasn't stupid. And she had practically fallen asleep in her soup.

He smiled, still gazing deep into her eyes. "You should rest."

In the one sleeping bag. His sleeping bag.

Her heart pounded against her ribs while her brain scrolled glorious, hot red, high definition images of all the things she was pretty sure she hadn't done with him last night.

She wasn't out of the woods yet.

In more ways than one.

Chapter Three

Rhys burned.

He lay swaddled by the sleeping bag, facing the fire, trapped by the weight of the woman who curled with her back to him. Every contact between their bodies seared him: the shy brush of her feet, the tickle of her corkscrew hair, the thrust of her shoulder blades.

She was so warm.

He hadn't expected that, hadn't known he could be moved by something as simple and profound as the stutter of her breathing or the scent of her unwashed hair. It's only human to care…

But he wasn't human. He hadn't let himself be human since he was eight years old. Or even half human. Caring was out of the question.

Restlessly, she stirred, her round buttocks bumping his heavy sex. She froze.

"Relax," Rhys said, his lips moving against her hair. "I can't do anything you don't want me to do."

"That's what I'm afraid of," she muttered.

He grinned reflexively before his smile faded. He didn't want to like her. It would make what he intended much harder.

Lying beside him, she pulsed with life and energy, solid and smooth as an egg, firm and ripe as a peach. Juicy. He wanted to turn her over, spread her wide, and sink into her living, giving heat.

He clenched his jaw, staring over her head at the dancing flames. Not yet.

She had to trust him, she had to want him, or there was no pleasure in possession.

Or revenge.

"Did you sleep well?" Rhys asked in his smoke-and-velvet voice.

They were lying spooned together—close together, Cait registered with the part of her mind that seemed to be working—in his sleeping bag. Beyond the overhang, snow glinted on the rocks and trees. The morning smelled crisp, cold, and delicious. Rhys smelled musky, male, and even more delicious.

Cait didn't even want to think about how she must smell or what she was feeling and certainly not about what she might actually do next.

In the romance novels her mother loved, the virginal heroines were always swept away by passion into the embrace of dark and dangerous strangers. Cait had never been swept away by anything. But she admitted to a trickle of curiosity and, deeper, more insidious, the slow welling of desire.

She was twenty-two years old. Wasn't it time she took this particular step into adulthood?

Step, hell. This was a giant stride, a leap of faith. What if she misjudged and fell flat on her face?

"I'm fine," she said cautiously. "Why, did I snore?"

Or thrash? Or… Oh, God, maybe she drooled in her sleep.

"No." He sounded amused again. "You just seem tense this morning." His thumb brushed her cheek, his touch light as a snowflake. Cait trembled. Catching a strand of her hair, he smoothed it carefully behind her ear. "You're all stiff."

She cleared her throat. "So are you," she pointed out.

That was his erection nestled against her bottom.

His soft laughter stirred the hair on the back of her neck and reverberated in the pit of her stomach. "I know something we can do about that."

She held her breath.

His arm came around her, warm and heavy. She closed her eyes. Don't breathe, don't think…

Don't stop.

A zipper rasped, loud in the stillness. The weight lifted from her abruptly. Cold air rushed in.

Cait yelped. "What are you doing?"

Rhys stood over her, smirking. "You should warm the stiffness from your body."

She curled on the open sleeping bag, hugging her knees to her chest. "What did you have in mind? A jog through the snow?"

Rhys hefted his small pack and held out his other hand. He had beautiful hands, strong and long-fingered. "Come."

Ignoring his help, she scrambled to her feet. "Where?"

He nodded toward a fissure in the cliff face behind them, a smooth, narrow passage in the rock. She was glad she hadn't noticed it last night.

"That's not a cave, is it?"

He smiled without answering and disappeared into the side of the mountain.

Damn it. She didn't want to brave some spooky tunnel. In fact, the only thing she wanted less was to wait out here alone. Straightening her shoulders, Cait followed him into the dark.

Except it wasn't dark. Not completely dark. Gray light filtered from high overhead and glittered from winking minerals in the walls. It wasn't that cold either, despite the dampness in the air. Her boots scuffled on the gravel floor.

The way widened. The light and heat increased. So did the moisture. It clogged her lungs and ran down the walls. The passage twisted; opened. Steam drifted and swirled above deep, still pools ringed with stone. Water gleamed, dark with the shadow of the cliffs, silver with the reflection of the sky overhead. High above them, trees clung to the lip of the crevasse, their branches sparkling in a sheath of ice.

Cait caught her breath in wonder. "What are we doing here?"

Rhys ventured farther in, stepping from stone to stone until he reached a ledge along the opposite side of the gorge. "I thought you would appreciate a hot bath."

She would kill for a bath. Her bones ached. Dirt chafed her skin. But…

"I can't get my clothes wet. I don't have anything else to wear."

Rhys shrugged, setting his pack on the ledge beside him. "So take them off."

"No."

"Suit yourself." In one fluid motion, he pulled his shirt over his head.

She looked away.

He laughed.

Cait's head snapped around. She opened her mouth to say something really cutting, but the words died in her throat.

The sliding light caressed the strong planes of his naked torso. She stared, transfixed by the sight of his dark hair spilling against his smooth shoulders, his broad, bare chest, his sleek, muscled arms. Wreathed in steam, silhouetted against the rock, his pale skin glowed in the gloom. He looked like a statue tribute to male beauty, like some ancient temple god brought to sudden, aching life.

She inhaled sharply, the sound echoing off the high walls.

Rhys smiled, taunting her, and dropped his hands to his belt.

She was beyond modesty. Beyond even pride. But she wrenched her gaze away, driven by simple self-preservation.

With her sight frustrated, her other senses yearned for him. She strained to follow the rustle of his clothing, the scrape of his boots, the clunk of his belt buckle. She heard his grunt of satisfaction as he entered the pool. Water lapped the rocks. Its faintly mineral scent filled her head and lungs. Under her clothes, she was hot. Sweating.

"It's safe now," Rhys said, his tone mocking.

Did he mean the pool? Or… ?

She glanced at him, standing chest-deep in iridescent water, silver, brown, and blue. She could see his face, a shadowed oval, and the perfect column of his throat and the lean grace of his arms. He had pulled some kind of soap from his pack. Its scent, sandalwood and clove, drifted over the surface, mingling with the steam. He rubbed the bar slowly across his chest. Lather broke and ran down his flat brown nipples.

Cait's mouth dried.

It wasn't fair he got to wallow naked in all that lovely hot water while she trembled on the edge. She didn't want to be an observer. She didn't want to be afraid.

Bracing her butt against the wall, she unlaced her boots and peeled off her socks. The moleskin bandages came with them. She tugged off her jeans, one leg at a time, holding on to the rocks for balance. The stone felt slick against her cold, bare feet.

"Sit," Rhys ordered. "Before you fall down."

His eyes were hot and intent.

Her heart beat high and rapidly in her chest. Her hands trembled. She fumbled with her bra beneath her T-shirt, sliding the straps down her arms and off. Stepping out of her panties, she sat gingerly at the pool's edge, feeling the full, shocking contact of warm stone on her naked bottom. The steaming water felt like heaven on her bare, battered feet. Her toes curled in pure pleasure.

She grasped the hem of her shirt. "Don't look."

Rhys raised his eyebrows.

Okay, he was going to watch. She swallowed thickly. She wanted him to watch.

She yanked her shirt over her head and slid off the boulder. Warming, soothing water rushed up her naked thighs and over her breasts. She gasped, her feet seeking the smooth, rounded stones at the pool bottom. Heat washed her, wrapped her, seeped into her. The water glided over her skin like silk, decadent, glorious. Her senses sprang to quivering life.

Rhys waded toward her. Cait held her ground as he stopped less than an arm's reach away. The reflective surface of the water shielded him from sight. She was acutely conscious of his nakedness. And her own.

His skin was smooth and flawless as a child's, but there was nothing childlike about his sleek, heavily muscled chest. Nothing innocent about the warm, lazy gleam in his eyes.

A different heat bloomed in her, opening under the water like an exotic sea flower, soft and strange, flowing, swaying with the pull of an unseen tide and the pulse of her blood.

She moistened her lips. "I've never done this before."

His brows arched. "Very few have. This place is not on any of your maps."

"No, I meant… I don't normally take naked baths with strangers."

Or have sex with them, either.

Her mind shied from the thought. But under the warm clasp of the water, her body accepted it. Welcomed it. Thrilled to it.

"I can't do anything you don't want me to do," he said again.

She wanted him to touch her. She longed for him to sweep her away, to relieve her of her decision and all responsibility.

Grow up, she told herself. She was done waiting for things to happen to her. For her.

It was time she made things happen for herself.

"I want to touch you," she said.

Something flickered in his golden eyes that wasn't mockery. He braceleted her wrist lightly with his fingers and put the bar of soap in her hand.

She clutched it. "What's this for?"

Stupid. It was soap. She was filthy. Obviously, he wanted her to wash.

He held her gaze. "Wash me."

Oh.

Oh.

Okay.

She ran the flat, slippery bar over his chest. He went utterly, absolutely still. Encouraged, she washed him with bold strokes above the water and tentative forays under it: his broad, smooth shoulders; his lean, muscled arms; his flat abdomen and silky thighs. His erection brushed her arm, full and hot, and he made a sound low in his throat. His eyes glittered. She paused, hands shaking, heart pounding.

"Caitlin." Just her name, in that dark, fluid voice, a command and a plea.

The blood rushed to her face. She touched him as she longed to, her fingers exploring under the warm water, tracing the smooth, blunt shape of him, testing his weight, his thickness, his unyielding stoniness.

The air grew humid and hard to breathe. She opened her mouth, and the scent of cloves and sandalwood filled her lungs, fogged her head, and lingered on her tongue.

"Now," Rhys said.

She looked at him, lost. Now?

In the depths of her mind, a thought, a warning, a remnant of caution darted and disappeared, lost in dark and hazy delight.

His lips curved. "It's my turn to wash you."

Oh, yes.

He slid the soap from her hand.

He was very gentle and very, very thorough. His soap-slick hands flowed over her, before, behind, between… Her knees wobbled. He nudged his leg between both of hers, supporting her, positioning her to ride his hard thigh as his palms glided up to close on her breasts. The pressure above, the friction below, made her crazy. She foundered, gasping with pleasure, drowning in sensation.

Swept away, after all.

Rhys clung to the sheer edge of reason by his fingernails. It was her fault. Caitlin's. She was hot and wet and eager, distractingly pink, delightfully awkward.

He wanted her.

Craved her.

And that was wrong.

She was supposed to crave him. He had leashed his own desires, smothered his feelings, and turned his considerable talent and technique to making her want him. To making her writhe and shudder. To making her twist and burn. To binding her to him.

But every time she gasped and floundered, flailed or grabbed at him, he felt himself slip another inch. She threw him off his rhythm. His heart pounded out of control. His blood thundered in his ears.

Cait arched and gulped, her curling hair sodden in the water.

She was messy, he told himself. A noisy, clumsy human.

And he yearned for her as he once yearned for his soul.

His hands shook. He forced himself to go slowly, penetrating her very gently with one finger, focusing on her pleasure, her arousal. He petted her, stroked her, over and over, torturing them both with exquisite restraint.

Caitlin sat up abruptly, water streaming down her back. "What are you doing?"

She was panting. So was he.

"Giving you pleasure." Only after he had brought her to peak after shattering peak could he risk losing himself in that hot, pink body.

Her face flushed. "I don't want you giving me anything."

His hand stilled. "What?"

"I'm not getting off while you watch. I want you in this with me."

"I'm here." He rubbed himself against her to prove it, clenching his teeth against the excruciating sensation.

She grabbed fistfuls of his hair and dragged his face to hers. "Then be here," she said, a demand and a plea. "Be with me."

He shuddered. "I can't. I don't—"

"Do it."

His control snapped and broke. His lust and his need sprang forward like unleashed beasts, snarling and clawing.

How could she? How dared she?

He pushed her hard against the rock and crashed into her with all the finesse of a boar in the underbrush.

She was ready, wet, aroused, but he heard her cry of shock or pain. His mind screamed at him. He was doing it too fast. Too hard. All wrong.

He couldn't stop himself. He had to… He needed…

His hips pumped. His vision blurred. Her hands tightened in his hair. Scored his back. She felt so good. So hot. Water sloshed over them both as he pounded into her, lost in urgency, in simple animal hunger. He was frantic for her, desperate for the slap of flesh on flesh, for the hot, tight clasp of her body, for the grunt of her breath against his cheek, in his ear. He was shaken, shaking, coming apart.

For a man whose survival depended on his lack of feeling, who prided himself on his exquisite control, it was over embarrassingly quickly.

She cried.

He should have expected that, Rhys told himself as he held her body and stroked her back. But he had never touched another human's tears, never known a mortal's grief. Even his own father…

He shoved the thought away.

Her tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, precious, hot, and harrowing. He licked them, pressing his cheek to hers, wracked, unmanned by the musky scent of her skin and the salt taste of her in his mouth.

"I'm sorry," he said against her temple, into her hair. "I'm sorry."

"It's all right. I'm all right. I asked for it." Caitlin raised her damp, flushed face. Her smile wobbled, twisting his insides. "Literally."

Rhys frowned. She shouldn't be making jokes. "I hurt you."

He intended worse than the brief, physical pain of penetration, but she didn't know about that. He didn't want to think about it.

Her fingers brushed the back of his neck, her touch soothing. That was wrong, too. He should be the one comforting her.

"Not really. I guess I just wasn't expecting it to be so… intense." She attempted another smile. "But I'm okay. It was okay."

Rhys's eyes narrowed. "Okay," he repeated.

She nodded. "For my first time. You know."

He didn't know anything anymore. All he understood was that she had shredded his control, violated his emotions, turned his world upside down, and for her it was just… okay.

She watched him, her brown eyes troubled. "It could have been a lot worse."

Defensive, mocking, he asked, "How would you know?"

She shrugged. "Girls talk. At least we weren't drunk."

Rhys scowled. He wasn't drunk. He had no excuse for his uncharacteristic loss of control.

And she… She was immune. Even in passion, Caitlin remained obstinately, perfectly herself. Instead of being reduced by sex and magic to a mindless, wordless, whimpering bitch, she made demands. Jokes. Excuses for him.

He couldn't stand it.

Puck, known to mortals as Robin Goodfellow, had warned her: Good won't always protect you.

But it had. It had.

Instead, she had destroyed him. Challenged him. Not merely sexually—he might have coped with that—but emotionally.

He could barely forgive her for that.

Or himself.

Bracing his hands on the stone by her head, he launched himself from the pool. Water lapped and sloshed. He welcomed the chill on his body. Naked, he pulled a blanket from his pack and turned to offer her a hand.

Caitlin climbed out awkwardly, her bare toes gripping the rock, gooseflesh prickling her arms and chest. Steam rose from her warm flesh. He didn't want to look at her. He wrapped the blanket roughly around her shoulders and then froze, staring down.

Pink smeared her white thighs. Blood. Her virgin's blood, streaked with water. Unthinking, he reached to touch her.

She smacked his hand away. "I told you I'm fine." She pressed her long legs together, pulling the blanket tightly around her. She sounded annoyed. Embarrassed. Not so immune, after all.

And she had cried.

Rhys met her brave brown eyes and felt a weight in his chest that might have been his heart. If he'd had one.

Chapter Four

Cait emerged from the narrow ravine, scuffling in her untied boots, still clutching the blanket over her damp clothes.. In a sudden shift of weather, the sun had appeared, making the snow sparkle and the trees blaze with melting ice. Vapor shimmered in the air.

Cait blinked. It was like coming out of a movie theater or the eye doctor's office. Everything looked brighter, sharper, clearer, every rock rimmed with shadow, every leaf illuminated with light. Even Rhys's already amazing looks took on an unearthly edge.

In this dazzling, light-tinged landscape, she felt small and cold and ordinary. Hitching the blanket around her shoulders, she shuffled toward the fire.

Rhys followed her silently, stooping to throw another log on the fire. The dying flames seized it greedily.

She cleared her throat. "Thanks. My hair's turning to icicles."

Rhys frowned. "You should dry it. You don't want to get sick."

"No," she agreed fervently.

WARNING: UNPROTECTED SEX IN FANTASY SETTINGS WITH MYSTERIOUS STRANGERS MAY RESULT IN HEAD COLDS.

AIDS.

Pregnancy.

Panic pressed under her breastbone like a knife. Oh, God, what had she been thinking?

All her life she'd been so smart, so careful… until Rhys. When she was with him she had no more inhibitions than a drunken coed at a frat party. Even now, she ached with awareness of him, his long-fingered hands and hard, lean body, his guarded, golden eyes and sensitive mouth.

She took a deep breath, to steady her nerves and her voice. "Although my mother says colds are caused by viruses, not exposure. So, as long as you're healthy…" She trailed off, looking at him expectantly.

"I am healthy. You will take no hurt from—" He paused. Some emotion flickered in his golden eyes and was gone too quickly to identify. "You will not get sick because of me. But you could get chilled."

"Healthy" was good, Cait thought hopefully. She could live with "healthy." She would prefer not to live with "pregnant," but she would deal with that when and if it happened. She ignored the crazy hammering of her heart, the unfamiliar soreness between her thighs. She was a grown-up. She would take responsibility for her actions.

She bundled the blanket around her wet head like a towel. "There. Satisfied?"

Rhys's gaze drifted over her, touching her breasts, her throat, her mouth. "No."

The rush of heat caught her unprepared. She was overreacting. Emotional. Off-balance. Because it was her first time, she supposed.

She reached for the kettle, covering her awkwardness with action. "I'll make us some tea."

"Caitlin."

She squinted at the fire. Whatever affected her vision this morning shot dancing color through the flames. "What?"

Rhys knelt beside her. He tipped her face to his. His eyes were warm, his touch light and cool. "I have something for you."

She struggled for breath, for humor and normalcy. "Breakfast?"

His smile gleamed. "Breakfast, certainly, later. This now."

He bent and kissed her mouth.

Heat washed over her. Cait closed her eyes and leaned into him, needing his warmth, seeking the reassurance of him wanting her. But before the kiss could go anywhere, he left her kneeling alone by the fire.

She heard him rustling in his pack. Chilled and disappointed, she opened her eyes.

He turned to her. She was so focused on his face she didn't see at first he held something in his hands, something that glittered in the tricky light: an intricately woven, thick gold chain.

He held it up, and the sunlight ran along the links like fire. "For you."

For a moment she wondered who the hell hiked through the Appalachians with an expensive necklace tucked in his backpack. But the sun struck the worked gold, dazzling her, and the question faded.

"Wow, it's… beautiful." In her new, sensitive sight, the light dripped from the heavy links of the chain and blurred the edges like water.

"It's for you," Rhys said, and stooped to place it around her neck.

Cait rocked back on her heels, moving instinctively out of his reach.

He frowned. "Caitlin?"

She stared at the gleaming necklace in his hand like a mouse transfixed by a snake. The links pulsed with a light and life of their own. She shivered.

"Don't you like it?" Rhys asked.

How could she explain her aversion to his gift? She didn't understand it herself.

"I… It's too much. We hardly know each other."

Which made the fact that she'd had sex with him—"Do it."—even more incomprehensible.

"It's a token," Rhys said.

Some token.

Cait stared at the sparkling, mocking necklace. The heavy gold chain resembled a rapper's bling or a… a dog collar. A very beautiful, very valuable, very decorative dog collar.

Her hand went to her throat. "I can't accept this."

"I want you to have it," Rhys said, kneeling behind her. "Let me fasten it for you."

She was tempted. All that gold carried weight. The necklace felt significant somehow, like a gift from a longtime lover rather than a trinket from a one-night stand. She wanted to think her first time meant something to Rhys. That she meant something to him.

But when the chain swung in front of her face, her hand reached of its own volition and grabbed it. "No! I want—" What? What could she possibly say without offending him? "—I want to look at it first," she finished weakly.

"You can look at it all you want," Rhys said, a bit grimly. "Around your neck."

Cait's hand tightened. The chain seared her palm. Her stomach clenched. "Not without a mirror."

His face tensed. And then he shrugged and released the necklace, leaving it dangling from her hand. "I can't force you, of course."

The knots in her stomach eased. Cait felt as if she had won some kind of victory instead of a silly dispute over a necklace. Of course he couldn't force her. She was overreacting again.

Her hand burned. She stuffed the chain into her jeans pocket without looking at it again.

Fortunately, Rhys didn't seem to notice. Or maybe he was simply too polite to comment. "You will at least accept breakfast," he said.

Relieved, Cait smiled. "I'd love breakfast. If we have time."

He gave her a blank look.

"Before we go to the shelter." Cait tried again. "You said you would take me to the nearest shelter today."

Rhys stared down his long nose at her. "You are in a hurry to rejoin your companion?"

Maybe he was jealous.

"Josh?" Somehow in the last twenty-four hours, Josh had gone from being an annoyance to being completely irrelevant. Cait shook her head. "No, but he must be worried about me."

"Then why hasn't he come looking for you?"

Cait shifted uncomfortably. Josh hadn't responded to her screams for help yesterday. She told herself he hadn't heard her, but… "I'm sure he reported me missing. There are probably rangers out looking now."

"If he notified the authorities, there would be search teams. And dogs," Rhys pointed out with depressing logic. "We would hear them."

"Maybe the snow slowed everybody down."

"The snow would have increased the urgency of the search. If there were a search." Rhys didn't exactly say Fat chance, but his tone implied it.

Cait frowned, troubled. She trusted him. He had rescued, fed, and sheltered her. They'd had sex, for heaven's sake. But she would feel less… alone if somebody else knew where she was. Or rather, that she wasn't where she was supposed to be.

"I still need to go," she said. "I don't want to risk Josh contacting my parents and freaking them out."

"Your parents… They would be upset if something happened to you." Not quite a question.

"I told you they were overprotective." She watched him take four small red-and-yellow apples, a loaf of bread, and a jar of honey from his pack. Her stomach rumbled. "I think it's because I'm all they've got."

Rhys quartered an apple. His knife had a bone handle with carved snakes twined around the grip. If she didn't look straight at it, the snakes wriggled in the corners of her vision. The illusion was almost enough to make her lose her appetite.

"They did not wish for other children?" Rhys asked in a perfectly normal voice.

She blinked and accepted a slice of apple. "They couldn't have any. Which is kind of ironic, because my mom was pregnant with me when they got married."

He lowered the knife. "They told you this?"

She swallowed. "No, I did the math when I was about ten. It didn't bother me. I mean, my parents are crazy about each other. Ever since they were in grad school. I did wonder why they waited fourteen years to make their relationship official, but maybe they just needed a little push." She shrugged and wiped her fingers on her jeans. "Maybe they didn't believe in marriage."

"Or maybe there was someone else."

She rejected the suggestion instantly. "Mom says Dad is the only man she ever loved."

"I meant for him."

The idea that her father could have had another lover seemed odd, disloyal, even, but Cait forced herself to consider the possibility for all of… oh, ten seconds. She had the impression—not from anything her parents said, more from the things they carefully didn't say—that her father had split for a while before they got married.

And then she shook her head. "You don't get it. You don't know my dad. He's Mr. Family Man. He would never do anything to hurt my mother. Or me."

"You are fortunate," Rhys said, and because of his peculiar, formal speech she couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

Maybe not. She remembered he hadn't seen his own father since he was eight years old. I have no family, he'd said.

Sympathy flowed through her. Impulsively, she reached out and patted him on the knee.

Rhys stiffened in outrage.

She couldn't feel sorry for him. He would not tolerate it. If she had the slightest idea who he was or what he had been sent to do, she wouldn't dare feel pity for him.

He could destroy her.

Her hand still rested on his knee. Her tanned, warm hand.

He looked from her ragged nails into her compassionate brown eyes and was lost. He couldn't do it. Not now.

She had touched him voluntarily. In kindness, not in lust. She had baptized him with her human tears, anointed him with her virgin blood. She had resisted his enchantment.

He could not destroy her now if his very existence depended on it.

Which, he reflected grimly, it might.

Her hand tightened. "What's the matter? You look…"

She paused, her kindness warring with her honesty, and he did not know whether to laugh or weep. How did a man contemplating his damnation look?

"Are you okay?" she asked.

He was offended.

He had been rejected before, of course. His father had hugged him sometimes, or ruffled his hair, but his mother never had. And when Rhys's father had chosen death over continued existence in the Queen's court, the eight-year-old had quickly learned his mother was impatient with grief and intolerant of tears.

But the adult Rhys had never been refused—anythingby a sexual partner before. He understood now the Queen's fury at a lover's rejection.

Not a good thought. Rhys got a grip. Not a helpful thought.

Not a thought he could explain to Caitlin or defend any longer to himself.

"I'm fine," he said. "But you are right. We should go soon."

There was a chance, if he got her away quickly, that his treachery would go undiscovered. Not a good chance. Ursus would have reported Caitlin had been successfully separated from her companion on the trail, and Puck—despite his occasional sympathy for humans—could not be trusted.

But the other sidhe were not Rhys's main concern. They would not question his command, and they had no reason, yet, to doubt either his power or his will.

Caitlin was his, by birthright. He had been chosen to bind her. He would be granted time to accomplish his task—even to enjoy it—before the others came.

Before the Queen came. The thought slid into his chest like a knife.

"You sure?" Caitlin asked, still concerned.

Her ignorance was her defense.

He forced himself to smile. "That we should go now? Yes. You don't want to worry your parents." He could not say the word without a slight bitterness. If not for her parents, she would not be in danger. Of course, she would never have been born, either.

The reminder goaded her to get up and moving. She laced her boots while he doused the fire. Rhys watched her clear away the remains of their breakfast, confident and awkward in her youth and her humanity, her wildly curling hair falling into her face; and longing for her flamed in him.

He had never forgiven his father for letting lust rule him, blind him, consume him, so that all he lived or hoped for was a smile from the Queen. When the smiles stopped, he had gone uncaring to his death, heedless of the son he left behind.

But now at least, perhaps, Rhys understood him.

He could not afford his father's weakness. He was his mother's son.

He slung his pack over his shoulder. "Come."

Caitlin cast a startled glance toward the overhang. "What about the rest of your stuff?"

He could hardly tell her the "stuff" she saw, chosen to impress and reassure her, was so much human trash to him. He had no need of it where he was going.

"I'll come back for it," he said.

As they hiked, the sun climbed. The snow retreated from rocks and ridgelines. Fog floated under the trees. The air filled with birdsong and the sound of rushing water. Ice tumbled down, revealing dark patches of fir and bare, wet branches.

Cait swung along, lifting her face often, drinking in the sun or the view or the moisture. "It's like a scene from a movie."

He had no idea what she was talking about. "A movie?"

She smiled at him. "You know, the one where the four children are fleeing the wolves through the snow, and the snow starts melting, and it turns to spring, and the whole time they're being pursued by the evil queen."

He stared at her, appalled, his heart pounding in his chest.

"You didn't see it," she guessed.

He managed to find his tongue. The evil queen… "No."

"It's based on some really famous children's book. Not that my mother ever let me read it," Caitlin added ruefully. "Too much woo woo."

"My mother," Rhys said with precise and terrible irony, "never let me read it, either."

Cait grabbed his arm. "Oh, look!"

Rhys tensed. He couldn't help himself. The sidhe did not touch except in the formal figures of the dance or the equally deliberate moves of sex. Every time Cait touched him, she breached the walls he'd learned to construct to protect the sniveling, abandoned, eight-year-old child within.

She pointed to a carpet of flowering trillium, its heart-shaped leaves poking through the melting crust of snow. "Isn't it beautiful?"

"Beautiful."

But he wasn't looking at the wildflowers.

Smiling, she turned and met his gaze. Her color rose, pink and warm and full of life.

The sidhe didn't blush, either.

He bent and saluted her with his lips—her warm cheek, her sunburnt brow. Her arms came around his neck. Standing on tiptoe, she kissed him back with undisguised enthusiasm.

She kissed him back.

Her response stripped him of finesse and control. He was suddenly shaking, desperate and clumsy as a boy beset by a succubus in the dark. Only the woman pressed against him was no greedy demon. This was Cait, sweaty and sweet, warm and real. Vulnerable.

He tangled his hands in her hair and heard—felt—her make a sound low in her throat. It vibrated in his chest. His cock swelled, hard against her leg. She wiggled against him, her arms tightening around his neck.

Yes, he thought. Hold me. Kiss me. Let me

Shuddering, he tore his mouth from hers and buried his face against her throat. Her pulse drummed. Her hair waved against his cheek.

"Stay," he whispered, his lips against her skin. She tasted of salt. "Stay with me."

If she stayed, he would find a way to protect her. He would devote himself to her happiness. She would live forever and never want, never need, anything else. Anyone else.

"Here?" Cait asked.

He raised his head. She was smiling, the curve of her lips warm and amused, her eyes free of shadows.

Or comprehension. She did not, could not, know what he was asking of her.

"Don't you think eventually we'd get a little tired of the great outdoors?" she asked.

He shivered. She had no idea. And it was better that way. Safer that way for them both.

He brought her along the paths of his people back to the woods she had left behind. The air thickened with human contagion. Her world overlaid his like a veil, dimming its sparkle, deepening its shadows. Here, where the old growth trees thrust their roots deep in the earth and pierced the sky with their branches, the fabric thinned. Any tiny tear in her perceptions, and she could fall from one plane to another.

But ahead, Rhys could see the dull obscurity of the track cutting like a scar through the living landscape. The trail, conceived by mortal minds and built by human hands a mere seventy years ago, would protect her.

His own way forked.

Rhys stopped and pointed. "There, do you see? Your way is there, through the trees. The blue blazes will take you back to the trail. The shelter is only a few hundred feet to your right."

Caitlin faltered. "Aren't you coming with me?"

He clenched his jaw against temptation. He could not. This reality was all he knew, all he'd ever known. His ignorance terrified and shamed him.

"I have to go back," he said.

Her gaze was steady on his face. "To collect your things."

He did not correct her.

"Well…" She sighed. "I'm meeting up with some friends in Hot Springs in two weeks. If you change your mind."

He held himself rigid. Was it his imagination, or were the birds suddenly, strangely still?

"Or… or you could call," she said.

He willed himself not to say anything. Her tears and her blood constrained him. Maybe they bound her, too. If he called her, she might come.

And if she came, it would be to her doom.

Her gaze fell. "I don't even know your last name."

There was power in names. But he would give her his, to carry like a talisman back to safety.

"Rhys Danuson." Rhys, son of the goddess.

She smiled as if they'd just been introduced. "Cait MacLean."

The forest was quiet. Too quiet. Even the rush and drip of water seemed muted and far away.

"Yes," Rhys said, unthinking. "I know."

Cait's brown eyes widened. "How—"

The trees held their breath. The air around them shivered.

"Go," he said harshly. "Go now. Quickly."

But it was already too late.

Chapter Five

Cait stared at Rhys. Her heart ached like a bruise.

She was an adult. She accepted responsibility for her own choices. Just because they'd had sex… She heard her own voice demanding, pleading, "Do it," and shuddered. Anyway, just because she'd given herself for the first time in a fit of lust or rebellion or adolescent curiosity didn't mean she expected Rhys to say he loved her.

But at least he could say, I'll call you.

He was looking over her shoulder. He wouldn't even meet her eyes.

" 'Go quickly'?" Cait repeated. "That's it? You can't do better than that?"

"Apparently not." The cold, clear voice, a woman's voice, rang from behind Cait—not loud, but as hard and scoured of emotion as a mountaintop. Rhys stiffened. "So, he disappoints us both."

Cait turned. And gaped. Whatever weird sparkly thing had affected her sight must have affected her brain, too, because she was definitely seeing things.

At least, she hoped she was.

She wanted to believe the woman blocking the path to the trail couldn't possibly be for real. She was too tall, over six feet at least, like a runway model. Not thin, like a model, or young, but fierce and beautiful and outlandishly dressed in a long, full skirt the color of blood and a high, white collar that framed her face.

Her face… Cait gulped. Her face was cold and shining as the moon. Her eyes were black and hostile. And at her skirts, crouched like a dog, was the short hiker, Goodfellow.

Cait's heart hammered. Her gaze darted to the trees, searching for Ursus. But the woman wasn't the sort of person you felt comfortable taking your eyes off for long.

"Bind her," the woman commanded. Her voice echoed in Cait's head.

Cait blinked. Uh…

"I cannot. Not against her will," Rhys replied seriously, as if the woman had actually made a rational request.

As if… Cait glanced back at him, her stomach sinking. As if he knew her. Now that Cait saw them together, they even looked a little alike. Their height, she supposed, and their hair color, and something strong and proud and secret in their faces.

He disappoints us both.

Oh, no.

The woman drew herself up, so she looked even taller and scary, despite the Mardi Gras costume. Or maybe because of it.

She sneered. "I do not need you to instruct me, manling. You must bend her will to your desire."

Nobody sane, nobody real, talked like that. Either the lady was crazy and Rhys was mixed up with these loonies, or Cait was losing her own mind.

And yet… Cait had a sick, growing conviction they were talking about her, Caitlin, about her will, about… Okay, she didn't have a clue what they were talking about. But her gut knew it was bad.

Goodfellow cleared his throat. "Perhaps with time, Lady…"

"It is not time he lacks," the proud woman said with crushing scorn. "It is stomach."

Speaking of stomachs, Cait's was making a serious effort to lose the tea and apples. Her head throbbed as if she had a migraine.

The woman's voice bored into her brain. "… deal with it myself."

Rhys answered.

Good, Cait thought, struggling to focus. He knew her. Let him deal with her.

Through the pounding in her skull, Cait heard, "… your grievance" and, "… not her fault," and felt a spurt of gratitude.

"I will have what is mine," the woman said.

"She was never yours," Rhys said evenly. "Nor is she mine."

The woman pinned him with her coal black eyes. "You lie. I can smell her on you."

Cait winced. Okay, that was creepy.

Her head hurt. She wanted to cling to the idea that the woman was crazy. Scary, the way the homeless guy in the campus garden mumbling to himself was sometimes scary, but not actually dangerous. But what did that make Goodfellow? A fellow escapee from the asylum?

Cait shivered. And what about Rhys?

Goodfellow cocked his head, regarding Cait with bright, black eyes. "She does not wear the necklace."

The woman's laser beam focus switched to Cait. Cait froze, her heart beating like a rabbit's, the necklace burning in her pocket. Her hand crept to her throat.

Leave me out of this, she wanted to protest. But the words clogged in her throat.

"It does not matter," the woman announced at last with magnificent indifference. "My debt will be satisfied."

"The debt is her parents'." Rhys was rigid, his voice without expression. "Let the punishment be theirs."

Now, wait a minute…

The woman smiled. Not a nice smile. "Her fate is their punishment."

Cait tried to think through the jagged pain in her head. They were definitely talking about her fate. About her parents. Talk about crazy. Her parents were the steadiest, most boring people Cait knew. Her mother was a librarian, for crying out loud. Her father owned a garage. Any two people less likely to be involved in… involved in… But here her imagination quite simply failed.

Your parents… They would be upset if something happened to you, Rhys had said.

Her fate is their punishment.

Cait felt a small, warming spurt of anger. ("Too stubborn for her own good," her mother used to say, and her father would laugh and shake his head.) She was tired and confused and her head hurt and the man she had given her virginity to was talking about her as if she wasn't there with a seven-foot-tall scary psycho woman. But she wasn't standing by while they threatened her parents.

She took a step forward. "Look—"

The lady swung her savage focus on Cait. Cait met the full force of her black gaze.

And immediately wished she hadn't.

The darkness in those eyes yawned like a pit before her. Whoever, whatever, stared back at her from the lady's eyes wasn't crazy.

It wasn't human, either.

Black wasn't a color, it was the void, deep and treacherous as a shaft under the mountain, empty as space without moon or stars. Faced with that bottomless gaze, Cait couldn't think. She could barely breathe. She was being drawn in, sucked into oblivion.

Relax. The memory of Rhys's voice caught at her soul like an anchor. I can't do anything you don't want me to do.

She didn't know what she wanted anymore. The lady's gaze sapped her will, weighted her limbs, squeezed her lungs. Her resolution slipped. She trembled on the brink of falling.

The chain burned in her pocket like a hot coal against her thigh.

From somewhere, Cait found the strength to breathe, and then the courage to resist. She concentrated on the pain, using it, holding on to it to withstand the pull of that black, immortal gaze, to drag herself back from whatever edge summoned her.

Gradually the grip on her senses slackened. Cait came to, still staring into the lady's eyes.

The lady frowned in displeasure. "There is more of your dam in you than I reckoned. Well, no matter." She raised her hand.

Cait gulped.

Rhys jerked. "No. Mother—"

Cait felt herself teeter on another edge. Mother?

The lady barely spared him a glance. "I am the Queen. I will have payment of my debt."

Rhys's face was as white, as set, as hard as hers. Seeing the two faces, so close, so alike, made Cait's stomach lurch. "Then take me."

Slowly, the lady lowered her arm. The quiet pressed under the trees.

Sharp anxiety seized Cait. "What are you doing?"

Goodfellow coughed. "Majesty… Please. Consider."

"Take me in payment," Rhys repeated, never taking his eyes from the lady. His mother? "And let her go free."

"What are you talking about?" Cait snapped.

"So be it." The words dropped like stones. The air shimmered like the surface of a pond. The queen flung up her hand. "Live solitary, apart from all your kind. And die alone."

"No!" Cait yelled. "Wait! Stop it!"

She didn't even know what she was trying to stop. But "die alone" couldn't be good.

She threw herself toward Rhys. The sky cracked. The earth heaved. She flung her arms around his shoulders and felt him change, felt his bones shudder and lengthen, felt his skin roughen and erupt with fur, felt his muscles shift and bunch. She tumbled with him to the ground, sprawling on her knees as the cry from his throat stretched into a howl that hung on the air. For one horrible, hairy, confused moment, she clung to him, feeling the terrible wrongness of his shape without comprehending. Details flashed without registering. Hot breath. Bared teeth.

Flaming golden eyes in a snouted, furry face.

Cait screamed.

The animal ("Wolf!" her mind shrieked) in her arms scrambled desperately for freedom, his paws digging at her thighs, ripping her clothes, his claws scoring her arms, drawing blood. Pain welled, thick and hot as fear, blotting out thought. Fresh screams tore from her throat.

The wolf crashed away through the underbrush.

Cait was sobbing, bleeding, her mind bright and blank with disbelief. She staggered to her feet. To follow it? To follow him? The forest floor buckled, pitching her into darkness.

She lay stunned, her fingers clutching rotting leaves, her body sprawled in melting snow. Her brain buzzed like a fly caught in a web. She couldn't think. She couldn't move. A black haze wrapped her, tangling her mind, trapping her limbs.

"What will you do with her, then?" somebody asked close to her head.

"Nothing." The silver voice stabbed like a knife through the fog. "She's none of mine."

None of mine, none of mine, none… The words spread through the woods like ripples on water.

Take me in payment, Rhys had said. And let her go free.

No! Cait cried in her heart.

But she could not move.

Overhead, the trees whirled lazily with a sound like car tires on wet road. Time passed, measured in heartbeats and the pulse of pain. Cold seeped into her bones. Snow pressed her cheek. She couldn't feel her feet.

She tried again to move. To cry out. Nothing.

Alone, she struggled against the creeping cold, against the blinding, binding fog and the pull of the dark. Her parents would be really upset if she never came home. And Rhys… Her mind splintered into a kaleidoscope of fangs and fur and burning golden eyes. Her cuts throbbed.

Okay, she wouldn't think about Rhys. Not yet.

A rustle broke the quiet. Cait's heart pumped. A squirrel? The Queen?

The wolf?

She heard… Could that be voices? She wasn't that far from the path to the trail. Casual, normal, human voices, carrying through the woods.

Hope rose, a warm trickle against the cold. Cait fought to lift her head. A weak croak escaped her throat.

Encouraged, she tried again. "Here."

Better.

"Help!"

Better still.

Two hikers—male and female, middle-aged, with sensible gear and shocked, concerned faces—rushed forward.

"Oh my God, oh my God," the woman kept repeating.

I'm fine, Cait tried to reassure her through chattering teeth, but she was shaking too hard to speak.

The man helped her to sit.

"What happened?" he asked as the woman pulled a thermal space blanket from her pack.

Cait accepted the blanket gratefully, clutching its foil edges around her shoulders. She looked into their kind, pragmatic faces and her heart sank.

What could she possibly say?

"Your daughter is a very lucky girl," the doctor told Cait's parents. Her father, Ross MacLean, stood at the foot of Cait's hospital bed. Her mother, Janet, sat holding her hand. "She's going to be fine. You'll be able to take her home this afternoon."

Cait didn't feel lucky. Or fine, either. Depressed, uncertain, and confused was more like it. She had no context and no explanation for what had happened. She was glad her parents were here. But…

"She can't walk," Janet objected. "Shouldn't she stay another night for observation?"

"All of her symptoms—the stumbling, the slurred speech, the confusion—are a result of hypothermia." The young doctor spoke in an earnest, lecturing manner he'd copied either from his teachers or some doctor on TV. "Not surprising, given that she was lost all night in a snowstorm. Now that the IV fluids have brought her temperature back up, she should make a rapid recovery."

"What about her cuts?" Ross asked.

"You'll want to change the dressings once a day when you get her home. And she'll need to see her doctor to complete the series of rabies injections."

Cait winced. She didn't want more shots. But if she tried to explain she wasn't likely to get infected from a man who had been magically transformed into a wolf by his pissed-off mother, the doctor wouldn't just treat her for rabies. He'd lock her up as a loony.

Her father frowned. "You said she wasn't bitten."

"The rabies virus can enter through a scratch. And since we don't have the dog that attacked her to test it for infection…" The doctor shrugged.

"It wasn't a dog," Cait said.

They all looked at her.

She dropped her gaze to the white top sheet on her bed, sorry she'd said anything. "It was a wolf," she mumbled.

"That's impossible," the doctor announced. "There are no wolves along the Appalachian Trail."

"Actually, that might not be true," Janet said in her librarian voice. "Back in the nineties, the Fish and Wildlife Service attempted to reintroduce red wolves into Great Smoky Mountain National Park, but the experiment failed. The pups all died and the surviving adults were supposedly recaptured. But there might be one wolf left in the wild."

Live solitary, apart from all your kind, the Queen had intoned. And die alone.

Cait stared at her mother, stricken.

Janet tightened her hold on her hand. "Honey? What is it?"

"Are you all right?" her father asked.

Cait pulled herself together. Her parents were her strength. Her support. How could she confront them? "I don't want to talk about it."

Her parents exchanged looks over the foot of her bed, drawing together, as they always did, at the least sign of trouble.

Rhys's voice haunted Cait. The debt is her parents! Let the punishment be theirs.

What debt had he taken on? What had her parents done?

"You'll feel better when we get you home," her mother said with determined cheerfulness.

The young doctor scrawled on Cait's chart. "The nurse will be in later to remove the IV and go over your discharge instructions. Your things are in the locker. Any questions?"

None that he could answer. Cait shook her head.

"Well, then." He offered her his hand, clean, cool, a little dry. "Best of luck."

Cait had the feeling she was going to need it. Her heart pounded as the door closed behind him. Her mouth was dry.

"Do you want anything, honey?" Janet asked.

She wanted her life back. She wanted the confidence that had set her on the trail, the time when her parents' love was the bedrock of her life, the world where her mother kept all woo-woo stuff away and tall, terrifying queens didn't materialize out of the woods to wreak magical vengeance.

But Rhys didn't belong to that world.

If she wanted Rhys, if she wanted to save Rhys, she had to leave that life behind.

She was afraid to question her parents, terrified their answers would shake the foundation of everything she knew and believed. Something had happened out there. She hadn't cut her arms and legs walking into a tree. But a tiny, persistent doubt niggled at her. She could have hallucinated. What if her parents had no idea what she was talking about?

Or… A knot formed in her chest. What if they did?

Cait swallowed. "Could I have my clothes, please?"

Her mother frowned. "Don't you want to wait for the nurse? Your IV—"

Cait tightened her hands on the sheet. If she didn't do this now, she might lose her nerve. "Can you just get them?" Another look between her parents.

"Sure." Janet stood and retrieved a small overnight bag from the bottom of the room locker. "I didn't know what you would need, so I packed a little of everything."

Her mother's thoughtfulness tightened her throat.

"Thanks," Cait said. "But I meant my old clothes. In the locker."

"You can't wear those," Janet said.

"I know. Can I have them please?"

Janet opened the locker and laid the plastic bag that held Cait's wet, dirty, bloodstained clothes on the bed.

Taking a deep breath, Cait tugged the bag toward her. She needed proof her mind wasn't playing tricks on her, that she hadn't made everything up—Rhys, the Queen, the wolf—in some exposure-induced dream. With a quiver of distaste, she plunged her hand into the pocket of her jeans. Her fingers touched warm, smooth metal.

She hadn't hallucinated that.

Relieved, she drew the necklace from the bag and glanced at her parents.

Her faint, brief satisfaction died.

Her mother was as white as the sheets of the bed.

Her father's handsome face looked haggard and old. "When did you get that? Who gave it to you?" he whispered.

Chapter Six

Her father stared at the chain in Cait's hand as if he saw a ghost. She felt his recoil in her gut.

"May first," Janet said suddenly. She looked at her husband for confirmation or reassurance. "She disappeared on May first."

Ross nodded. "Beltane."

Cait shivered. She needed the answers her parents could provide. But every response raised fresh questions. How much did they know? And how did they know it?

Janet clasped her hands together in her lap. "You told me once the sidhe's world intersects with ours at times and places when we're vulnerable. But why now? Why, after all these years?"

The sidhe. The people of the hills, Rhys had called them.

Ross's mouth was grim. "She couldn't touch us before. Not after you defeated her. But what better way to strike back at us than where we're most vulnerable?"

Realization widened Janet's eyes. "Through our daughter."

Our daughter. They were talking about her as if she weren't even here. Just like Rhys and… and his mother.

Frankly, she was getting tired of being treated like the only nonadult in the room. "Hello?"

Her father regarded the necklace coiled like a snake against the white sheets of her bed. "What are you doing with that… that thing?"

The light ran lovingly along the length of chain. Cait poked it with one finger. "I was hoping you, um, could tell me. What is it?"

"It is a sidhe bràighde," Ross said. "A binding chain. Did you get it from her?"

"Her, who?" Cait asked. But she knew. She knew.

"The Queen," Ross snapped. "Did the Queen give this to you?"

"N-no."

"Ross, honey." Janet touched her husband's arm. "Caitlin isn't wearing it. She's all right."

He glared. "All right? She's in the fucking hospital."

"But she's here. With us. She's safe."

Cait didn't feel particularly safe. Not with the cuts on her arms and legs still oozing blood and her father looking like thunder.

"She's safe now. Who gave this to you?" he asked Cait again.

She had never seen her steady father so upset. She'd never given him any reason to be upset. She was the girl who was home before midnight, who kept track of her drinks, her purse, and the car keys.

Cait could only imagine how her dad would react if he found out exactly what had happened out there in the woods. Everything that had happened.

"It was a gift from… from someone I met on the trail," she said.

"Male or female?"

"Male." She stuck out her chin. "His name is Rhys. Rhys Danuson."

Giving him his full name made their meeting seem more normal, more acceptable, as if Rhys were someone she could bring home to meet her parents instead of a trail hookup with a seriously scary mother and very bad karma.

But her father didn't appear reassured. "The Queen's Rhys?"

Cait's jaw dropped. "You know him?"

"Another lover?" Janet asked.

Ross shook his head. "Her son. By her favorite before me."

Cait's heart pushed into her throat. Rhys was the son of the fairy queen. The man she'd given her virginity to wasn't really a man at all.

And her father knew him…

"When was this?" she demanded.

"A long time ago. Before you were born."

Cait struggled to do the math, but nothing added up. "So, Rhys was, what? Like, five?"

"When I first met him? Eight or nine. He was a young man when I left. The sidhe do not age the way we do," he added, forestalling her question.

Rhys's words burned in her brain. I haven't seen my father since I was eight years old.

"What about Rhys's father? Did you know him, too?"

"His father was… gone shortly before I got there."

Janet caught her breath.

Cait moistened her dry lips. "What do you mean, gone?"

"He died."

Unease formed an indigestible lump in Cait's gut. "So, he was… mortal?"

"Yes."

"Human?"

"Yes."

That was something, Cait thought. Wasn't it?

"What happened to him?" she asked.

"Does it matter?"

"Yes!"

Janet stirred in her chair. "Caity, honey…"

Her father still stared at the golden chain, his shoulders bent, his face drawn. Cait refused to feel sorry for him. She had to know. Rhys had sacrificed himself for her. She had to know why.

"Tell me," she begged.

Ross turned his back to the room and stared out the hospital window. "The children of the earth, the sidhe, are immortal. They are neutral in the war between heaven and hell that plays out in humankind. But their neutrality comes at a price."

Cait tightened her grip, clinging to the necklace like a lifeline. "What price?"

"Every seven years, they sacrifice a human soul to hell."

Sacrifice?

"How do you know?" Cait whispered.

Her father turned from the window, and hell was in his eyes. "Because I was almost one of them."

Cait felt her assumptions disintegrating like a sand castle caught in the tide. She had always looked to her parents for love, guidance, support… answers. Only her parents weren't the people she thought they were, and the answers she had relied on were making things worse.

And yet her father's responses made a horrible kind of sense.

Maybe there was someone else, Rhys had suggested.

I am the Queen. I will have payment of my debt.

"So, what happened to you?" Cait demanded. "Did you just get lucky or something?"

Janet made a choked sound of protest.

Ross dropped his hand to her shoulder. To comfort her? Or steady himself? "You could say so. Your mother saved me."

Cait looked at her safe, round, comfortable mother, with her sensible short hair and the crow's-feet at the corners of her eyes, and felt another assumption topple and slide away. "How?"

"I loved him." Janet reached up and squeezed her husband's hand. "I went to the fair folk on Midsummer's Eve and I… Well, after that, I wouldn't let go."

"Honey, we're so sorry," Janet said. "We never thought this would affect you."

Remembering their vigilance all through her childhood, Cait wondered if that were true. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Her mother gave her The Look, the one she used to hush noisy patrons in the library. "What could we have said? We didn't want to scare you. And we never dreamed the Queen would take revenge on us by sending her son after you."

"Did he hurt you?" Ross asked sharply.

The long scratches on Cait's thighs pulsed and burned. Her mind pulsed and burned. Rhys licking the tears from the corners of her eyes, his cheek hot against her own, his voice whispering, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I hurt you."

Her insides contracted.

"No," she said breathlessly. "No, he was—"

She recalled that moment by the fire when some unidentifiable emotion had flickered in his eyes. You will take no hurt from—You will not get sick because of me.

"He was very careful and—and kind," she said.

Janet's gaze was soft and penetrating. "Are you sure?"

Cait flushed, uncomfortable with what her mother might see. Or guess. "Yes."

"At least you're safe now," Ross said. "Thank God you escaped."

Janet leaned forward and patted her hand. "It's over."

Cait was safe, but she hadn't escaped, exactly. Rhys had saved her. And it was far from over.

Cait bit her lip, looking down. Her mother's hand rested on the hand that clutched the necklace. The links were warm against her palm.

This was one problem her parents couldn't fix for her.

She had to go back. To save him.

Her parents argued with her, of course, because they loved her and they were afraid. Her mother cried.

"You're not going," her father said adamantly. "You survived the last time. There's no guarantee you'll survive the next."

"You don't understand," Cait said.

"I understand. I was with the sidhe for fourteen years. They will destroy you, baby."

"Daddy, I have to try. Rhys sacrificed everything for me."

"Why would he do that?" Janet asked.

"Well, he…" Cait floundered. Confessing to her parents Rhys had been her first lover didn't seem like a good way to get her father on her side. "He felt sorry for me, I guess."

"Good for him," Ross said. "That doesn't mean you have to kill yourself for him."

"But I care about him."

"Any feelings you have for this… fairy, the Queen will use against you. You don't know what you're up against."

"So help me."

"No."

Cait cast desperately for an argument that would convince him. "You said you knew the sidhe. Maybe one of them could help."

Janet turned troubled eyes to Ross. "Do you think Puck might… ?"

"The minute she sets one foot off the trail, Puck will take her straight to the Queen."

"Who's Puck?" Cait asked.

Her parents ignored her.

Cait appealed to her mother, who could usually be counted on to see both sides of every argument. "I have to go."

"You can't," Janet said.

The Queen's words echoed in Cait's head. There is more of your dam in you than I realized.

"Why not?" Cait cried, exasperated and afraid. "You did."

"I loved your father. We were already lovers by then."

Cait opened her mouth. Shut it.

An uncomfortable silence filled the hospital room.

"You're not going." Ross exchanged a long look with his wife. "Nobody is going. And that's final."

They didn't know Rhys, Cait reasoned. They didn't care about him. They loved her, and they loved each other, and the fairness of one half-mortal's fate didn't even enter into their decision.

But Rhys had loved her, too.

Or at least, Cait thought, torn between hope and anguish, he had cared for her enough to sacrifice himself for her sake.

The debt he had taken on was her parents, but the responsibility for his fate was hers.

Even if she hadn't exactly figured out what to do about it yet.

I went to the fair folk on Midsummer's Eve…

Cait let her parents bring her home. She gave herself time to heal. She made an appointment to have her stitches removed and endured four more rabies shots spaced over the next month. She called Jill to congratulate her roommate on her engagement and to beg off their rendezvous in Hot Springs. She even applied to the graduate program in Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to begin in the spring semester.

And on June twenty-first, Cait packed her bag for a campus visit, said good-bye to her parents, and walked off the trail south of Wayah Bald.

The sun slanted gold and green through the trees. The air was warm and still, with the stickiness of an approaching storm. Cait trampled the rioting wildflowers, trying not to think. She didn't look for the trail blazes. She wanted to get lost.

Under the shadow of a deep rhododendron, a little man waited on a fallen log like a lump of lichen, his clothes the color of fallen leaves and feathers in his hair.

Cait's steps dragged. Her heart rocketed to her throat. She coughed to clear it. "Puck?"

Chapter Seven

The little man grinned, revealing pointy teeth. "Ay, Puck." Cait raised her chin. "Or should I call you Goodfellow?"

"Puck or Hob or Robin Goodfellow, it's all the same to me." He hopped off the log. "Took you long enough to get here."

Cait tried very hard not to feel offended. "It's Midsummer's Eve. I thought that was the best time to find you."

"Unless I'm wanting to be found. You're nearly too late."

Her heartbeat quickened. "Too late for what?"

Puck shambled through the woods at surprising speed. "We'll have to move quickly."

Cait fell in beside him, her thoughts and her feet struggling to keep pace with his. "Are you taking me to—" Hot breath, white fangs, flaming golden eyes. The healed cuts on her arms and legs burned with remembered fire. The gold chain pulsed in her pocket. Cait swallowed. "—to Rhys?"

Puck shook his head. "I wish I could. But he's wild now, and wary of the Queen."

Cait was feeling pretty damn wary herself.

"So are we going…" Her voice failed. She tried again. "Are you taking me to the Queen?"

"Horns and hooves! No."

She was a little reassured. But only a little. "Then where are we going?"

Puck stopped and shot her a curious look from the corners of his bright black eyes. "You mean, you don't know?"

"I don't know anything," Cait confessed. "I just wanted to find you."

The sidhe smiled—not his usual mocking, mischievous smile, but something warmer, almost affectionate. "And so you have. But if you did not know what you were seeking, how did you know where to look?"

"My father said…" The minute she sets one foot off the trail, Puck will take her straight to the Queen. "He seemed to think you would find me," Cait said carefully.

"Miles from where we met before." His tone made it a question.

"Yeah, well…" Cait puffed as she followed him up a rough slope littered with branches and dotted with pink and yellow flowers. "I looked at the map. Wayah Bald… Wayah means wolf in Cherokee. I figured that was, like, a good place to start."

"You are more clever than I thought," Puck said.

Cait flushed. She hadn't felt clever. More like "desperate" and "grasping at straws." Simply getting this far had tested her ingenuity and resolution, and the main task, whatever it was, still lay ahead. Approval, even approval from the Queen's stooge dwarf, was ridiculously encouraging.

"Thank you," she said.

"Are you also brave?"

She was scared to death.

"I'm here," she said as steadily as she could. "And I'm willing. Is that good enough?"

"It will have to be. Or your lover is lost."

Cold fingers traced down Cait's spine despite the oppressive heat and the sweat she was working up climbing the mountain. But she felt a spark of anger, too. "She's his mother! Hasn't she done enough? She's already cursed him. Does she have to kill him, too?"

"The Queen does not kill her young," Puck said matter-of-factly, in the tone he might have used to say, The Queen does not eat her young. "But she will not save him."

"Save him from what?"

"The Wild Hunt rides tonight. And their quarry is the Queen's son."

The Wild Hunt.

A memory caught Cait of Rhys's voice rising and falling in the firelight while the snow fell outside their shelter and he told her the story of the Wild Hunt, who harried the damned across the sky.

She stumbled. "What do you want me to do?"

"You must ride with them," Puck said. "You will never find young Rhys else, or keep up with the pursuit."

Her heart quailed with the impossibility of what he was asking.

"I'm not much of a horseback rider," she said.

Puck grinned, his teeth very pointy. "It's not a horse I'll be giving you to ride."

Like that made it any better.

"And then what?" she asked.

Puck was silent.

"What do I do then?"

He gave her another sidelong look. "Why, then you must do as your heart bids, for I've no better guidance to give you."

Daylight faded as the sun sank in a bloody welter of clouds. Cait's legs ached, her feet were swollen, and she had a stitch in her side. After six weeks off the trail, she was out of shape.

You're nearly too late.

She dragged herself up by gripping the trunk of a sapling. Puck scuttled ahead. At least concentrating on her sore feet and tired muscles as they climbed took her mind off what would happen when they got to the top.

She had always been stubborn. Like her father, her mother said.

She tried to be compassionate and fair-minded. Like her mother, her father said.

But pity or fairness or pure pigheadedness weren't all that drove her now.

It was the memory of Rhys's rigid shoulders and taut, white face as he confronted his mother for her sake. Take me in payment. And let her go free.

It was the way he said her name, standing in the waters of the pool, the silver reflection sliding lovingly over his upper body and his eyes molten gold. Caitlin.

Just her name in his dark, fluid voice.

Caitlin.

I'm coming, she told him, tears pricking her eyes, her breath sobbing as she climbed.

No. The answer came forcibly enough to make her slip. It is too dangerous. You don't know what you're doing.

Cait took a deep breath to steady herself. It's okay, she thought back tentatively, although it wasn't, really, and if she was hearing voices in her head she probably had lost her mind. Puck is helping me.

No answer.

Cait crested the hill, trying not to feel bereft. At least she wasn't crazy.

But as they emerged from the tunnel of dark-leaved rhododendron, Rhys's voice brushed her mind like the wings of a moth in the dark. He is the Queen's servant. He is not to be trusted…

Puck rubbed his hands together. "Here we go."

Cait felt like a bug, trapped between the lowering bowl of the sky and the mountains stretching in every direction. She shivered in the wind from the western peaks. A storm was building, piling the clouds with a massive hand along the horizon. High, high above, the sky broke through, the moon a flat, pale disk against the deepening blue. But the clouds were gray, and as they rolled forward, darkness covered the hills.

"And here is your ride," Puck said, as if he were announcing her date for the prom.

Stones clattered, and a black, shaggy pony trotted out from among the black, rounded rocks. Its fat sides were as solid as the hills and its mane was long and tangled.

Cait regarded it with misgiving.

The pony rolled its yellow eyes back at her, exposing long, yellow teeth in a grin like Puck's.

"Is it… safe?" she asked.

Puck shrugged. "It is the Pooka. It is not safe, but it is fast. The Hunt will ride along the ridge lines and harry the woods until they find the wolf. You must be with the leaders at the end, or they will tear him to pieces before you can stop them."

"Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?"

Puck hesitated. "The sidhe do not take sides. It is not our nature. But I called your father my friend once. And the child Rhys… I had the minding of him often enough. He was a solemn baby." His smile flashed, and this time Cait did not recoil. "Mayhap you will make him happier."

The wind blew. The clouds boiled up. The Pooka stamped its hooves, striking sparks from the rocks. Above the mountains, heat lightning played. The rumble chased it across the sky.

"It will be soon now," Puck said. "Mount."

Cait scrambled awkwardly on the Pooka's broad back as a man strode out from the trees, a horn at his side and hounds at his feet.

She blinked and almost lost her balance. Not a man. Seven feet tall, he was antlered like a stag and all gold: gold skin, gold hair, gold horns, gold… eyes.

Rhys's eyes, in the gold man's face.

Her breath left her.

"Who is that?" she whispered, trying to keep her teeth from chattering, desperate not to attract the horned man's attention.

Puck looked surprised by her ignorance. "The Hunter King."

Okay. If there was a queen, it made sense there would be a king. But what freak of fairy jealousy or politics would drive him to hunt the Queen's half-human, bastard son?

The hounds milled around the horned king's legs, lifting their heads to the wind. They weren't truly dogs any more than their master was really a man. Their long legs were oddly jointed, and their lolling tongues were the color of flame.

Cait shivered and averted her gaze to the hunter, solitary under the darkening sky. "He looks… familiar."

"Ay, he would. He is Rhys's sire."

Her heart, which had been pounding in her chest, lurched into her throat. "But… Rhys's father was human."

"He was once. No longer."

The Pooka snickered, tossing its head in the rising wind. Cait gripped a handful of raggedy mane.

The storm was almost upon them, roaring and tearing through the trees. Lightning forked over the hills. The Hunter King raised his horn to his lips and blew one long note that rolled like thunder.

"Be ready for it!" Puck shouted.

Ready for what? Cait thought, but before she could get the words out of her mouth, the clouds stooped, and the Wild Hunt descended like a flock of geese invading a pond, the powerful rush of their passing like the beat of a thousand wings, blinding, deafening. Their clamor filled the sky.

She stared in disbelief as the king strode into the heart of the storm, his hounds surging forward. The wind swept them up and hurtled them into the sky.

The Pooka bunched its great round hindquarters like a cat pouncing on a mouse and bounded into the wind. Cait yelped and tightened her clutch. She had no saddle, stirrups, bridle, or reins. Twisting her fingers in the Pooka's black mane, she clamped her thighs to its barrel sides and hung on for dear life.

The wind howled. Cait was blinded, buffeted by the rain and the hair—hers, the Pooka's—whipping into her eyes. But through the streaking rain and mane, she glimpsed other things riding the storm beside them. Lightning flickered off helms and skulls, glittered in eyes and spear points. She gasped and turned her face into the Pooka's warm neck.

Between earth and sky they swooped and lurched, following the path of the peaks, touching down on the mountain balds where no trees grow. She knew them from her maps: Wayah Bald to Copper Ridge, Rocky Bald to Grassy Gap. Some crests were overgrown with shrubs, some cleared, but it made no difference to the riders. In and out of the sky, they coursed, sizzling down on grassy flats or churning over the tops of the bushes, scorching the earth with lightning.

If she fell, she would die.

She leaned flat over the Pooka's bunched neck, her fingers tangled in the coarse mane by its ears. Her arms and legs burned. Her hands were numb and throbbing, as if she were back in gym class, twisting above the basketball court, trying desperately not to slide down the climbing rope.

Lightning cracked. The Hunter King, glowing gold, strode like a giant among the peaks. He sounded another long note on his horn, and the hunt brayed and whooped and roared and cackled in response.

She could not see their quarry. She could barely see the ground. But she felt the hunt's fierce satisfaction swirl and swell, like foxhunters in England who claimed to love the joy of the chase, not the thrill of the kill.

Which was fine, Cait thought, from the perspective of the hunters, but it didn't change the fate of the poor fox. Panting. Exhausted. Torn to pieces.

You must be with the leaders at the end, or they will tear him to pieces before you can stop them, Puck had said.

You're nearly too late.

Please, she thought, and No, and Rhys!

Squeezing her legs on the Pooka's sides, she hunched over its neck, scanning the ground.

There, a darting movement at the edge of the trees…

There, a lean shadow against the darker shadow of the rocks…

Flattening itself under trees and scrub, zigzagging through weeds and across open spaces, driven from whatever refuge it had sought by the marauding hunt, ran the wolf who had been Rhys.

Cait's heart stopped.

Cornered against a cliff face, ringed by fallen rock, there, at last, the wolf turned at bay as the Hunt tumbled out of the sky.

Chapter Eight

Too late, too late, too late…

Cait braced as the Pooka hit the ground in the midst of the swarming hunt, its flat black hooves sliding and scattering rocks. The shock of their landing jarred Cait's bones and loosened her grip and snapped her teeth together. She fell off, over its shoulder, under its hooves.

The Pooka stepped delicately around her and away with a whicker of horsy laughter. Bastard.

Cait lay on the hard ground, struggling to breathe, too stunned to move. And maybe her precipitous arrival had stunned the hunt, too, because they didn't seem to be moving, either.

The wolf howled, a rising minor note that hung on the damp night air and shook her heart.

Rain streaked down. It plastered her hair to her head and her clothes to her body and ran into her eyes. But the cold water in her face revived her.

She pushed to her elbows and then to her knees. She lurched to her feet, using the rocks for support.

The wolf had slipped around her, facing the hunt. Its head lowered. Its hackles raised. The hair stood up all along its back. The white hounds circled just beyond reach, snarling and darting in short, snapping forays. Dwarfed and surrounded, the wolf lowered its head, growling deep in its chest.

Cait clenched her hands, her nails biting into her palms. Why didn't it seek the protection of the cliffs at its back?

And then she realized.

It—he—Rhys was defending her.

Protecting her.

Still.

The rain abated. Beyond the eager, snarling hounds, the Wild Hunt pressed in silently. The fuzzy moonlight reflected in the gleam of harness, the glitter of eyes. The hunter raised his horn to rally his hounds to attack.

And Cait stepped forward and stood beside the wolf.

The Wild Hunt groaned and swayed like trees in the wind.

She reached down blindly, seeking comfort from the thick fur beneath her fingers. The wolf's lean body vibrated with rage and fear. Or maybe that was her trembling. Her knees felt like rubber bands.

The hunter turned his antlered head to regard her with his golden gaze, and she trembled even more. There were no whites to his eyes, and his pupils were long and narrow like a goat's.

"Step aside, girl." His voice was deep and rusty with disuse. "This is none of yours."

She was stubborn. She had always been stubborn. And maybe stubborn was as good as brave. Cait stuck out her chin. "Yeah? Well, he's not yours, either."

A creaky, hollow sound escaped the hunter's mouth, like the opening of an empty chest in an abandoned house. With a shock, Cait recognized he was laughing.

"His dam claimed otherwise," he said.

The breeze died. The Hunt stirred and fell still. Cait glanced beyond their glinting spear points and ghostly banners and saw the Queen, stiff in her red dress, shining with her own faint silver light, watching them.

Shit.

"He doesn't belong to either of you." Cait shoved her clenched hands in her pockets, feeling the brush of warm metal across her knuckles, feeling the wolf beside her, tense as a coiled spring. "Not anymore. He's mine."

The hounds whined eagerly as the hunter considered them both with his awful, golden eyes. "He does not bear your mark," he said at last.

Clumsy with hope, Cait fumbled the necklace from her pocket. The links blazed briefly in the moonlight. She knelt and fastened the chain around the wolf's hairy throat, ignoring the leap of her pulse at the hot breath on her cheek, the white fangs so close to her face.

Panting a little with fear and triumph, she dropped her arms from around the wolf and turned to confront the Hunter King. "He does now."

The Wild Hunt sighed. The Queen cried out, in shock or protest.

And warm, hard arms came around Cait from behind and pulled her back against a lean, muscled chest.

"Dear heart," Rhys's shaken voice said in her ear. "What have you done?"

Joy rose in a wave, flooding her heart, choking her throat. "I, um, bound you." She turned in the circle of his embrace, gazing up anxiously into his eyes. "It's a binding chain, right? So they can't have you. You're mine."

"Much good may he do you when he is dead," said the Hunter King.

But Cait wasn't giving up. Not with Rhys transformed and back in her arms. "If you want him, you'll have to go through me," she said fiercely.

Rhys touched her cheek, turning her face to his. "You are not much of a barrier, dear heart," he said, still somewhat unsteadily, but with that undernote of laughter she had heard and loved at their first meeting.

"You make a poor challenge." The Queen's cold, silver voice fell like moonlight in the rocky clearing. "And a worse bargain. Use your head, girl. Why should both of you die?"

Cait stiffened. All her life she had been the good girl who made smart choices, who listened to her head instead of following her heart. Until now. Until Rhys.

Do as your heart bids, Puck had urged.

Well, she'd tried. Hadn't she tried? She'd faced down the Queen and the King and the hounds, she'd ridden the damn Pooka through the storm. She had figured out the riddle of the necklace and turned Rhys back into a man.

And it was all for nothing.

They were going to die anyway.

What could she do against the spears and swords, the tearing claws and trampling hooves of the Wild Hunt? Throw rocks?

She looked at Rhys, despair rising in the back of her throat, and swallowed hard.

The smile in her lover's eyes faded like the last promise of daylight. "She is right," he whispered. He stroked her hair and cupped her face in his hands. "Don't let my sacrifice be for nothing. Save yourself. Go home. Grow old. Remember me."

He kissed her then, so tenderly her heart quivered and her eyes filled with tears.

It wasn't right. It wasn't fair.

She blinked fiercely. "Screw this. He can't have you."

"You can't stop him," Rhys said, so reasonably she wanted to punch something. "And if you anger him, you'll lose your own chance to go free." He released her. "Go now, dear heart. Go quickly."

"You." Cait turned on the Hunter King, her heart burning in her chest. "You gave up everything for love once. For the Queen."

"Caitlin…" Rhys warned.

She shook her elbow free of his grasp. "I'm not finished."

The Hunter King's handsome, inhuman face was devoid of mercy or understanding. But he hadn't killed her yet, so she kept talking, praying for him to listen, willing him to hear.

"You let yourself be sacrificed because she didn't love you. Well, Rhys let himself be sacrificed, too. He knew when she turned him into a wolf that he could be killed, that he could die. So, okay, he's not immortal anymore. He's got to die eventually. But he doesn't have to die tonight. He doesn't have to die at your hand. He could still have a long life." Cait caught her breath. "With me."

"Better for him if he died," the Queen said.

She swept forward in her red dress, and the Wild Hunt wavered and drew back from her like shadows from a flame. The King's hounds whined. "Would you condemn our son to long years on this shadow earth, to crawl in pain and sickness to slow death? Better to end it now."

Rhys's face was white in the moonlight.

She was losing him, Cait thought in desperation. She was losing.

"Please," she said to the Hunter King. "You were alive once. You were in love once. Please. Let him go."

The hunter turned his proud, antlered head toward his son. "Is that your will? To live with this mortal woman and then to die?"

"Yes," Rhys said. "If she'll have me."

"So be it."

"No!" The Queen's voice rang like a trumpet. "I will have what is mine."

The horned king's eyes blazed. "He is yours no longer. You gave him to me when you summoned the Hunt. And I release him."

Cait turned and grabbed Rhys. "Are you sure?"

He smiled crookedly. "That I love you? Yes. That you'll have me? Not at all."

She flung her arms around him. "Of course I'll have you."

He held her close, pressing his lips to her hair. Her pulse sang in her ears, but she could still hear the strong beat of his heart. A fresh wind blew through the clearing; and when she opened her eyes, the night was clear and bright, and the clouds were streaking away toward the horizon like horsemen chasing the dawn.

"But I nearly betrayed you," Rhys said.

"When the Queen wanted you to bind me," Cait guessed.

"Even before then." His mouth set in a straight line. "Ursus would not have attacked you except to drive you to me."

"Oh. Well." Cait exhaled. "That was bad. But it wasn't like you knew me then."

His eyebrows raised. "Are you always this forgiving?"

"No," she admitted cheerfully. "But it's only fair to tell you if you plan to seduce me again, I intend to forgive you."

He smiled at her in the moonlight, his eyes hot and the curve of his mouth tender. "I am happy to hear it."

They kissed, and her love for him shook her heart and warmed her down to her toes. The kiss deepened, with tongues and teeth, before Cait remembered their audience and broke away with a gasp. But when she glanced around the clearing, all trace of the fair folk had drifted away with the breeze. They were alone.

In the mountains.

In the dark.

She sighed as the real world impinged on her fairy tale. "I don't suppose you can summon a little sidhe magic to get us to a shelter for the night."

"I can do better than that," Rhys said.

"Really," she said skeptically.

He nodded. "Look around. Do you recognize this place?"

She surveyed the circle of trees and rocks, the tall cliff face and the overhang behind them. "Not really."

"It looks different without the snow."

She gaped as the meaning of his words sank in. The cliff? Okay. And the overhang. The firepit and a narrow fissure in the rock and… Was that his abandoned camping gear, concealed in the shelter of the rock? "But that was miles from here!"

"There are—you might call them shortcuts—in the sidhe world," he said. "You traveled farther than you know that night."

"Wow." She watched as he stooped under the shelf in the rock and dragged his sleeping bag into the moonlight. "So are we going to be able to get home the same way?"

"No, I am fully mortal now."

She had to know. "Do you regret it?"

He looked up from building a fire. "Regret that I can live with you and make a life with you? That I can have children and a family? No. I love you, Caitlin."

She moistened her lips. "Would you say that if you weren't wearing that necklace?"

He grinned and straightened from his position by the fire. Reaching behind his neck, he unfastened the chain.

"I love you, Caitlin," he said, holding her gaze. "And as for this…" He spilled the golden links in her hand. "You can make it into rings or save it for our children. I don't care."

He kissed her then and drew her down on the sleeping bag spread by the fire. While the moon climbed in the sky and the forest sang around them, he held her and stroked her and loved her. He took her, took everything she had to give and gave everything of himself in return.

Cait accepted the powerful surge of his body on her and in her and tightened her arms and legs around him, feeling her world alter and align with the two of them at its center.

It was magic.

No, Cait thought afterward, lying with her head on his hard, damp chest. It was love.

She smiled.

Rhys stroked her hair back from her forehead. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking we better not invite your mother to the wedding."

His laughter shook the shadows in the rocks and made the fire dance in delight. The moon sailed full-bellied over the crests of the clouds, and the mountains dreamed.

Author's Note

"Dear Reader,

How Caitlin's mother, Janet, won Ross MacLean from the clutches of the Fairy Queen can be found in an earlier novella, "Midsummer Night's Magic," in the anthology Man of My Dreams (Jove, 2004). That story—along with the myth of Eros and Psyche—inspired this one. I hope you enjoy them both!

Virginia Kantra